


The Witches of Salem

by Revenant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adaptation, Animal Transformation, Case Fic, Evil Witches, Humor, M/M, Magic, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Series, Romance, Teenagers, Transformation, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:31:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenant/pseuds/Revenant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a legend in Salem, of three sisters accused and hung for the crime of witchcraft, but not before they had killed several of the local children and placed another under a terrible curse. It is said that on Hallowe'en night, when the moon is full, the witches will rise again when a virgin lights the Black Flame Candle.</p><p>A little over three hundred years later, Sam Winchester is passing through town trying out his newly awarded independence on what he suspects will be a simple salt-and-burn; why can’t things ever go like he plans?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Salem Massachusetts was not like anything Sam had imagined. He wasn’t certain exactly what he had been expecting, but driving into town felt disappointing. 

If he thought about it, he would likely credit his disappointment to the wild way in which the town seemed to have embraced the season. Not that there was anything wrong with Halloween, but Salem had come up so frequently in his high school history classes that to him it seemed a place frozen in time. There was an image in his head of 17th century Salem, complete with wooden gallows and hanged witches; the grinning jack-o’-lanterns, window decals of blob-like ghosts and green-skinned warty crones wearing black pointy hats were incompatible with this picture.

Sam felt a little foolish for expecting to drive the heavily purring Impala through a town lodged somewhere in the 1600s, and he spent the rest of the drive to his motel thinking about Army of Darkness and attempting to imagine how the people of historic Salem would have responded to his sleek, shiny ride. 

Salem was perfectly modern, despite how many historic buildings still stood, with women clad in blue jeans, not in heavy dresses, and with people toting cellphones and laptops and plugged into this or that bit of technology. No one was lugging around a torch, and there was no pyre in the center of town, let alone a gallows. There were no witches.

The novelty of the Impala had not faded since his dad had pulled him out of bed on the morning of his seventeenth birthday and into the crisp morning air to stand, still in his pajama bottoms and a thin T-shirt, in the middle of a motel parking lot somewhere in Idaho. John had casually flicked something into the air, which Sam had deftly and unthinkingly caught in one hand. There had only been two keys hanging from a plain key ring. John had removed the keys to the Impala from his dangling jumble of keys that included the ever-present little talisman, and a ribbon, courtesy of Sam’s first ever ritual, imbued with luck and protection, a gift to his father one long-ago Christmas. 

Sam remembered standing there, staring dumbly at the keys in his opened palm and thinking, “No way,” and then actually saying aloud, “Dad, no way!”, to which John had laughed and said, “Way.” Sam might have done a little dance, if his dad hadn’t been standing right there but, as it was, he remembered he’d laughed a lot and given his dad a spontaneous hug that had shocked them both before he’d pretty much gone running at the car. 

He knew the Impala better than anything; he knew the smell of her, the feel of her, and all the little tricks she played that, John once explained, no mechanic would ever understand. At the time, he hadn’t understood that the roadside car maintenance lessons were John’s way of getting him ready for the day when he’d hand over the keys. If he had known, Sam might have complained a little less.

Along with those keys had come independence. Not long after that day in the parking lot in Idaho, Sam had brought up a possible hunt. The strange bumps and thumps reported from Salem were probably just people with Halloween jitters in a town with a notorious history, but it was worth checking out. John had looked at him and said, “Sounds good, Sammy.” And then, a little later, about the time they’d been marching their bags to their separate vehicles, he had said Sam could handle it, that John trusted him, and that a boy needed some space from his dad sometimes. 

There was no doubting the truth in his father’s words, as Sam had been wishing for some independence since he was about thirteen. He hadn’t dared ask anything more, and had simply waved and sped off before John could change his mind. After seventeen years, finally Sam could make his own decisions.

So he drove into Salem, and yeah, maybe it didn’t quite match the impossible expectations that Sam had collected and clumped together into a collage no town could possibly live-up to, but whatever disappointment he felt toward the location was not enough to quell the part of him that was still high on his new found independence. His first ever hunt all on his own.

______________________________

Salem was home to a small museum dedicated to a local legend: three sisters who had been hanged for witchcraft in October of 1693 after some local kids went missing. The unimpressive museum, located in what was supposedly the very house the sisters had inhabited all those years ago, had, over time, acquired some outrageous artifacts that were also attributed to the sisters. 

All things considered, the museum had done pretty well for itself, except that, in the past few weeks, there had been an increasing number of peculiar incidents in the area. At first, it had merely been a few benign bumps and thumps which Mr. Cottes, the man who owned and maintained the museum, had heralded as joyfully atmospheric. Of course, then the incidents had escalated, and after the latest one, which had featured looting, followed by a fire that had almost incinerated the entire lot, Mr. Cottes had begun taking the matter more seriously. 

He was now considering closing the entire museum down. 

Sam had found an article that mentioned the escalating occurrences, as well as the Sanderson legend when he’d been trolling around on the Internet looking for a hunt. Most of the hunts Sam and his dad had faced over the years featured deaths, not disappearances. The sad truth was, a situation had to get that serious before it warranted mention in a newspaper or online article reputable enough to make it worth their while to investigate. This time Sam felt he had the opportunity to bring down the museum’s angry spirit, or perhaps the angry spirits, before they had a chance to cause any real harm. 

It hadn’t taken Sam long to complete his research. The incidents had been consistently located in or around the Sanderson museum and there hadn’t been anyone living there prior to it becoming a museum. He supposed the stigma of having once housed witches was enough to keep the demand to live there low. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly choice location, either. 

The house had been falling apart and condemned before Mr. Cottes’ great grandfather had picked it up cheap. It had been deeded down to his grandfather and then his mother and Mr. Cottes regarded it with pride as his family’s contribution to the history of Salem. Mostly, though, it was a tourist trap, a place to scare the kids around Halloween.

With no other suspects, Sam had looked into the Sanderson sisters’ history and, with their rather unpleasant and exceedingly public demise, angry spirits wasn’t a far leap; in fact, it was pretty textbook. 

The only complication was that following their hanging the townsfolk had burned the bodies of the sisters, assuring that they could never rise again.

Sam set off on his second day in Salem to visit the Sanderson museum, confident that the matter could be resolved as soon as he discovered the object to which the sisters were bound. With any luck, he’d be back on the road by morning, not that he had anything particularly pressing. Still, there was no reason to let the hunt linger just for something to do.

He tried to keep that in mind as he pulled the Impala into a space in the small parking lot, about a three-minute walk from the museum. The autumn air was fresh and tangy with the smell of leaves and earth in a cycle of decay, and there was a crisp breeze that made him adjust the collar of his coat. The sun was still out, though, and it wasn’t so cold that he had to do up his jacket; it was his favorite type of weather.

With his hands in his pockets, along with the iron dagger for added protection, Sam strolled casually along the side of the dark tar road, startling slightly as a black cat dodged a car and bolted right across his path before disappearing into the withered shrubs. 

“Jesus,” Sam muttered. “Stupid cat.”

By the tall wooden sign, weatherworn but still legibly announcing that people should ‘Meet here for the tour,’ people had already begun to assemble. The tour was, according to the brochure from the local diner, the ‘only way to see the Sanderson house’. 

It also cost ten dollars, which seemed a bit steep. Sam handed over a crinkled bill to a stooped and glowering man who operated the gift shop across the road from the museum. 

“Sign here,” the man said, indicating a heavy leather-bound book that lay open on the counter-top. Sam picked up the pen and then winced as the EMF meter he had in his pocket, one ear bud allowing him to track any disturbances, suddenly screeched in his ear.

“Uh,” he said, noticing the unimpressed stare the shopkeeper was giving him and quickly plucked the bud from his ear. “Yeah, sorry.” The man continued to stare as a black cat hopped up onto the counter and then climbed its way to sit on the man’s shoulder. Distracted, Sam signed his name quickly, only realizing that he had scrawled ‘Sam Winchester’ for all to see after the damage had been done. He hoped his writing was too messy to read.

Glancing down at the signature, the man said, “Tour starts in one minute. The next one’s in a half and hour.” Quickly, Sam left the gift shop and crossed the street.

“Heya everyone! Gather on round!” a girl was calling as he stepped up to a steadily growing crowd. 

She was outfitted in a dark faded blue dress made of some rough fabric, and wearing a light blue apron. Her blond hair was pulled back in a loose bun with a plain white cap on her head. Sam supposed Mr. Cottes insisted on having his tour guides in period costumes for atmosphere. 

She raised her arm and waved it back and forth to get everyone’s attention. “My name is Susannah, and I’ll be conducting your tour through the Sanderson Mill House.”

Susannah had a wonderful opening monologue about the controversy surrounding the Sanderson sisters: they could be described as simple maids living somewhat apart from the townsfolk in the woods in order to tend the mill and make cloth, or as sinister crones with unusually long lives who would steal away and eat the children of the village. 

According to the legend, some time in 1693, children had begun disappearing, until finally one of the local farmer’s daughters, Emily Thackeray, vanished, and her brother went to the mill with his friend to retrieve her. When the villagers arrived at the scene, summoned by Dean Thackeray’s friend, they found Emily’s body but no sign of her brother. The villagers hanged the sisters that night, though the Sandersons vowed that they would rise again. 

There was enough humor in the guide’s presentation to keep the atmosphere light, and enough gossipy whispered undertones to send shivers of excitement up and down the spines of every tourist. Sam found himself enjoying Susannah’s knack for storytelling and obvious enjoyment of her work. When she motioned them forward to the house, she caught Sam’s eye and gave him a devilish wink.

The Sanderson house was situated on the outskirts of the town, on a small black-tar highway that cut through a dense forest. It was a water mill, though the water that once ran beside it had since become a bubbling swamp; a damp afterthought filled with weeds. 

As it required running water to function, the house always stood separate from the rest of the town. Even in its heyday it had still been surrounded by thick forest, with barely a worn path leading up to it, or so Susannah insisted. That isolation, paired with the private nature of the sisters, hadn’t helped the Sandersons when the community turned against them.

“This way,” Susannah encouraged, leading them from the front of the house, up the creaky steps of the porch and through the front door. The mill house was remarkably small, so Sam could understand why the tours were staggered as they were, with the groups kept to a manageable size of no more than eight.

As soon as they entered the house, they encountered a slight traffic jam as the earlier tour had to march single-file to get out the front door as the other group came down from the upstairs, an open space that served as the sisters’ shared bedroom, with a rail that overlooked the main room. 

The main floor was clearly the principal living space, with a table and chairs in one corner to designate the kitchen. Though the house was obviously cared for and maintained, the heavy scent of must seeping from the very wood in the walls and floors belied its age. There were wrought-iron wall sconces made to look like candles, but even with the sun angling through the glass of the windows the house still seemed dark and dreary. 

Susannah had them crowd around a large cast-iron cauldron hanging in the very center of the room, which was supposedly where the sisters had brewed their evil potions. “But where’s the bathroom?” a little girl, barely taller than Sam’s knee asked with a concerned frown.

“They used an outhouse,” Susannah said, and then added, “Outside,” when the girl didn’t quite seem to understand.

The girl’s mother leaned down to whisper something in her ear, presumably explaining how outhouses worked, that there was no flushing toilet in those days. “Yich,” the girl said. 

The girl’s mother flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said to the group, when her daughter’s reaction caused a group of boys around Sam’s age or slightly younger, to begin snickering.

“Not at all,” Susannah dismissed easily.

Against the far wall stood an ancient-looking wooden bookshelf stuffed with tomes and texts that were falling apart, all had bizarre and sinister titles, but some seemed less authentic than others. Sam had returned one of the ear buds to his ear before the tour, but the EMF meter in his pocket was of little help, groaning and beeping so persistently that he’d turned it off within the first three minutes of the tour. 

Determining which items were fake and what might have actually belonged to the sisters was more difficult than Sam had initially anticipated. Whoever curated the little museum space had gone to some lengths to make it appear as genuine as possible. The potions cabinet, complete with a human skull and a mason jar filled with rodent bones was, Sam felt confident, entirely faked, but he did not know what to make of a book that was entirely encased in glass and sitting on a pedestal which Susannah brought them over to.

“This,” Susannah said, in a low gleeful tone crouching by the wooden podium she was indicating and raising her arms like a cartoon witch casting a spell. “Is the spell book of Winifred Sanderson. They say it was given to her by the Devil himself, and contains the recipes for her most wicked and sinister spells.” She lowered her voice and almost hummed the last few words. 

The book had two coiled snakes on the upper and lower corners, and one snake slithering down the edge of the binding. Thick stitches arched across the cover and there was a bulge surrounded by a metal disc, like an eye that was closed. 

“What’s it made out of?” one of the teens asked, peering closely through the glass.

“Human skin,” Susannah said with relish. The boy skittered back a bit, and then immediately tried to look as if he had not been utterly repulsed by the notion. Sam smirked at the guy’s reaction. He may have never encountered such a thing before, but after hunting a skinwalker, who tended to leave its skin in gooey piles of flesh, split fingernails and broken teeth, the book was hardly disturbing. Catching Sam’s smirk, the guy glared but that didn’t faze Sam at all either.

“Over here,” Susannah said, stifling a chuckle at the interplay, “is the Black Flame Candle.”

The candle wasn’t much to look at: it sat on a plain wooden stand, white candle wax streaked through with red in a strange patchwork design. “It’s made from the rendered fat of a hangman,” Susannah continued. “According to the legend, it will raise the dead when it’s lit by a virgin on a Halloween night. Like tonight,” she added brightly, with a dismissing laugh, to appreciative chuckling. Behind him, Sam could hear the group of teenage boys snickering and rolled his eyes.

“What’s a virgin, mummy?” the little girl asked.

“Have you ever tried it?” one of the teens piped up, distracting the little girl, much to her mother’s relief.

“Would you like to be the first?” Susannah offered with a sly grin. The boy turned red and skittered back, his trepidation written plain on her face. His friends nudged him and grinned, but Sam noted that none of them volunteered to light the candle, and, in fact, gave it a wide berth. 

The upstairs was not as exciting as the main floor, consisting as it did of three small and uncomfortable looking beds and not much else. There were three large broomsticks tilted against one corner of the wall, belonging, Susannah assured them, to the real Sanderson sisters. 

“What did they need three broomsticks for?” asked one of the guys, only to be shoved by his for his stupidity. “For _flying_ , obviously.”

There was a black cat sitting on the corner of the bookshelf as they made their way down the stairs, watching them imperiously from above. Susannah showed them back out the front door and around to the rear of the house, where they stopped by a little stoned garden filled with herbs and plants. She indicated the deadly nightshade and wormwort, as if that were somehow proof of the sisters’ sinister inclinations. 

“It is said that the bones of a thousand children are buried within these gardens,” Susannah stated, bending forward a little and toeing curiously at the ground, which made some of the more squeamish tourists glance down at their feet and dance back away from the herbs.

The tour wrapped up where it had begun, just to the side of a wooden sign that read: Sanderson Mill: Come see the Witches’ House for yourself! Susannah gave a dramatic account of the hanging of the Sanderson sisters, which prompted the mother to usher her daughter away quickly, obviously regretting not asking for the recommended age for the tour. Susannah brought her story to a closed by flicking a streamer at a skinny brunette teen and startling a humorously cracking and high-pitched scream from him. Everyone cheered and applauded. 

When the group began to wander in the direction of the gift shop, Sam caught Susannah’s eye and the girl smiled at him. “Sticking around?”

He shrugged casually, glancing back at the house. “How much of that stuff is real and how much is thrown in just to scare us tourists?”

Susannah laughed. “Ah, a skeptic, huh?” She perched on the low stone wall by the house and, after a moment, Sam settled beside her. “You know a lot about the legend?”

“Some,” he said. “I thought it was appropriate, considering I’d be passing through town.”

“It is the season for it,” she agreed. “We get a _lot_ of business this time of year. To answer your question, not as much is made up as you’d think. I mean, the potions are bogus, of course, but some of the books, including Winifred’s spell book, and the candle and cauldron, those were theirs. The beds are original as well, though the bedding’s been changed out.”

She smiled broadly at him, clearly proud of the little mill. “Mr. Cottes has done a really good job of keeping the place up. I’m a history student and I have to say, as someone who’s done a lot of work on those particular sisters, there’s a lot more to the rumors than you’d think. Although,” she wrinkled her nose and plucked at her rough blue dress, “no one would have worn whatever this is supposed to be.” 

Sam laughed. “I suppose it’s for atmosphere.” 

“Well, it’s itchy as all hell.” She rolled her eyes, and then leaned forward as a fluffy black cat pushed through one of the open windows in the house and leapt down onto the path just in front of them. 

Sam frowned at it. “You guys have a lot of black cats around here. Is that for atmosphere as well?”

“No,” she said, leaning forward to coax the cat over. “We only keep the one. It’s tradition, really.” When she caught Sam’s frown she smiled. “I must have forgotten to add that to the tour. When Dean Thackeray ran off into the woods after Emily, the little sister he should have been watching, he was never seen again. According to legend, Winifred Sanderson cursed him to live forever as a cat, trapping him for eternity.” 

She scooped up the cat into her arms and dropped him onto her lap. “Hey, babe,” she greeted, scratching behind the cat’s long tufted ears. She sighed. “I think that’s the most horrible part of the legend,” she said, softly. “If my little sister were taken like that, when I was supposed to be looking after her. If I couldn’t protect her…I wouldn’t want to spend an entire eternity remembering how I failed her.” 

After a moment, the cat relented, ceased its efforts to escape and instead settled into a purring sprawl on her lap. Susannah brightened, a pleased grin breaking across her face as she preened, “He loves me.” From where it was situated on her lap, the cat rumbled. Sam thought the purr was so loud it sounded like the engine of the Impala. 

Susannah tipped her head to the side and smirked wryly at Sam as she confided in a mock-whisper, “It might have something to do with the cream I sneak to him on my breaks.”

He laughed, reaching over to scratch the purring feline’s head. “How much of this witch stuff do you actually believe?”

“Well,” she hedged. “It’s history, right? I mean, I’ve done the research, and I can tell you all this legend stuff is founded on actual events. There were three sisters living at the old mill, and they were dragged out and hanged for witchcraft, and there are enough accounts that mention their dying threats that I figure there’s truth in most of the rumors.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “But?”

She chuckled softly. “But,” she said, with emphasis, “I think the Sanderson sisters were just like most of the people who were killed around that time: completely innocent women who someone in the village took a dislike to. I mean, Sarah Sanderson was supposed to be quite beautiful, maybe she was caught having an affair with the baker, and his wife was looking for revenge. Or maybe Winifred, who was supposedly very bright, and was actually a midwife, threatened one of the local doctors.”

“And Mary?”

“I don’t know what Mary could have done,” Susannah admitted. “By all accounts she was very sweet, if a little slow. But that’s another thing,” she continued. “History is fundamentally biased. I mean, there’s a stretch where the town logs and things show that no one had any qualms whatsoever about the Sanderson sisters, and then suddenly they’re being accused of murders and eating babies. It’s complete hysteria. Classic scapegoating.” 

From its perch on her lap, the cat whipped its head around, tracking a bird overheard. After a moment, it took-off, bounding into the forest, and Susannah smiled as she watched it go. “Is that really what you wanted to talk about? A bunch of accused witches?”

“Well…” Sam looked a bit sheepish and rubbed the back of his neck. He liked her, and he wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with her, but Sam had trouble when he liked the people he bumped into: it always made it harder to get back onto the road when another hunt beckoned. 

The last time he’d dated someone John had given him a talk about keeping things casual, easy, and not getting caught-up with someone who couldn’t ever understand the life they led. It hadn’t stopped Sam from hooking up with a girl, or sometimes a guy, now and again. It was always someone brought close by a hunt, who knew enough of the life that Sam could finally let loose, until inevitably he had to go while they tried to convince him to stay. Hunters were nomads; it was part of the job. The travelling didn’t much bother Sam, except that it continuously prevented him from having something, even just one thing that was completely and entirely normal.

Susannah bumped her shoulder against his. “Maybe I’ll see you around town,” she said. “Sam Winchester.”

“Hey,” Sam said. “How did you…?”

She laughed, bright and full. “You signed the guestbook,” she said, winking.

______________________________

On the drive back to the Bluebird Motel, Sam stopped for dinner at a cramped corner restaurant that had a blue awning and dark wooden chairs with bright yellow cushions. His waitress was tall and thin, with grey-black hair. Upon first glance, she looked as if she might be solemn and strict but she was, in fact, chatty and bubbly. 

She took Sam’s order with an assessing glance, brought him a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice even though he asked for small, and, when she set his chicken Caesar salad down on the table, promptly dropped three chocolate chip cookies onto his plate: “A growing boy like you needs to eat more!” 

After dinner, Sam flipped open his phone and selected his dad’s number. Despite his support of Sam’s growing independence, John had made it quite clear that he expected his boy to check-in and keep him informed of any developments in the case. While this stipulation was normally one Sam would have disputed, he had felt happy enough to be putting distance between himself and his dad that he’d let it slide. Later he could decide whether or not to comply with John’s order. Like his dad, Sam had quite a facility when it came to bending the truth.

On the sixth ring there was a hiccupping sound and then his father’s familiar rumbling voice, _“This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached at the moment. Leave a detailed voicemail and your number, and I’ll return your call.”_ Sam pulled the car into a parking spot just in front of his room, turned off the engine and slumped back against the seat as he said, “Dad, it’s me. I’m in Salem following that case; pretty sure it’s an angry spirit over at a local museum. I’m going over tonight to take care of it.” He paused, toying with the idea of saying ‘good-bye’ or asking his dad to call back. 

Sam ended the call; he had no intention of meeting-up with his father after Salem, and he was almost certain his dad hadn’t intended him to, but after so long traveling with his dad, the sudden independence felt almost overwhelming. That was what the Impala had meant, an acceptance that if they persisted going as they had been, butting heads as Sam pushed for more responsibility and freedom, while his dad fought to maintain his military hierarchy of ‘no questions, just follow orders’, they would have ended up going in separate directions but under much worse conditions. This way, Sam figured, at least his dad was out there, willing to have his back if needed, and the thought wasn’t too stifling.

With a sigh, Sam slipped his phone back into his coat pocket and climbed out of the Impala. Night was already falling over the town, but the Sanderson museum was staying open late in honor of Halloween. Sam had a few more hours to kill before he could count on the old mill being empty. 

Taking in a deep long breath of the crisp, chill autumn air, and noting the full globe of the moon that was already creeping its way up into the sky, Sam considered what to do. There was no point in showering, as salt and the smell of ash tended to linger even on the best days, and he had every intention of driving back to the museum to wrap-up the case later that night. Checking his watch as he pulled the motel keys from his pocket, Sam resigned himself to killing a good few hours.

Sprawling out on the bed, Sam ran a steady circuit of the limited television channels that offered no HBO, and absolutely no porn, before settling on a showing of _Casper_ , airing on a family channel that had stretches of commercials for obnoxiously loud children’s toys that bleeped and blinked and moved themselves. The commercials ran for longer stretches than the movie actually played. 

Another advantage to his newfound independence, Sam thought as he lay there, was that his dad wasn’t around to insist he spend his time exercising or cleaning his weapons, or sparring. John wasn’t there to monopolize the television either. 

Sam set the movie on low, dragged out his laptop and amused himself with Bejeweled when he wasn’t watching the vaguely transparent ghosts, shaped like white twirls of whipping cream, belching green vapor and accosting Bill Pullman with rippling carpets and various household appliances. 

When he began to hypothesize about the use of a vacuum cleaner as a weapon against the undead, Sam closed down the laptop and unrolled a soft cloth, occupying himself with thoroughly cleaning out his guns and trying to refrain from relying on Disney for practical knowledge about hunting restless spirits. 

He couldn’t imagine what his dad would say if Sam were to casually inquire if he had ever been forced to use a vacuum cleaner as a weapon. Sam made a mental note to perhaps ask Bobby who was more likely not only to have an answer and actually give it, but also to have had experience taking down restless spirits with all sorts of unusual and unconventional weapons.

At ten o’clock, Sam packed a bag with salt and iron, two lighters and a shotgun with salt rounds. He kept a gun tucked into his waistband hidden by his coat, just in case, and then locked his room and headed back to the Impala. 

The main streets of Salem were mostly empty, though music emanated from a few nightclubs and he passed more than a few overrun parking lots. As he drove further from the heart of town, he noticed lit jack-o-lanterns and saw costumed teens rushing along the street. He remembered with a start that it was October thirty-first.

Supernatural creatures each had their own habits, some preferring full moons and others no moons at all. Certain creatures only woke at night, and others only the day, but beyond those confines, the supernatural didn’t work on a schedule. Halloween had no meaning to them whatsoever, but Sam couldn’t remember ever having hunted something on October thirty-first before.

He pulled the Impala up to the side of the street, forgoing the walk from the parking lot in favor of convenience; if there was one thing he had learned growing up with his father, it was that it never hurt to be prepared, and having less ground to cover to get to your safe getaway was a necessity.

The black of the Impala made-up for the inconvenience of her bulk, and he did his best to pull far enough into the brush that the car would not be immediately noticeable from the street; it wouldn’t do to have a concerned cop stopping to check out the vehicle and locate its missing driver. 

At night, with only a single lamp lighting the foot of the path, the old mill looked eerie, looming ghost-like and ominous over the street. Sam pulled his bag from the trunk and walked to the back of the mill. After stacking a few rocks to make a fire pit and salting the ground just to be safe, he left his bag and, armed with his gun, an iron blade, a set of picklocks and an EMF reader, he crept to the side of the house. 

Without any water, the mill wheel was mostly just for display, though it had been mended periodically in order to preserve the house as much as possible. Just above the massive wooden wheel was a window that Sam had noticed during the tour. It had a creaky latch that no one had bothered to fix as it was on the second floor. 

The aged mill wheel served as a convenient ladder, with the river dried up, though it was a bit of an awkward stretch from the wheel to the window. Flipping open his switch-blade, Sam carefully opened the window latch, slithering half-way into the room before a dark shadow streaked by and startled him. His body convulsed and twisted until he face-planted onto the second floor of Sanderson House with a clattering bang. 

“Jesus Christ!” he swore, startled, then quickly jumped up and prepared to defend himself against whatever spirit had materialized.

Susannah’s legend-has-it cursed black cat sat in front of him, head tilted back, surveying him with dark judging eyes. “Uh,” Sam said, “nice kitty.” 

It hissed at him.

Unwilling to be intimidated by a tiny ball of fur, Sam stepped over the thing, ignoring the claws swatting at his leg, and skipped down the stairs, pulling out his EMF meter as he went. 

A quick survey of the main floor indicated strong activity, but the book and the candle both gave a significant spike on the EMF. Sam’s chest tightened and his breathing sped up at the proof of supernatural activity. The cat had given him a start, but he was still waiting for the spirit to manifest, was still concerned that it could come at any moment, and the likelihood only increased with each passing moment. 

Sam pushed the nervous thrum of adrenaline aside, switching off the meter and stuffing it back in his coat pocket, exchanging it for a set of lock picks.

He made quick work of the glass casing that housed what was purportedly Winifred Sanderson’s evil spell book. 

“Okay,” he admitted to himself as he hesitated over the book. “This is actually kind of gross.” 

Trying not to think about it being bound in human flesh, or what that strange bulge on the front cover was, he reached forward to pick up the book. Suddenly, four sets of claws latched onto his back, sharp points piercing through his jacket and shirt and pricking at his skin. 

The hissing and spitting cat startled him so badly that he reacted without thought, grabbing at whatever had clung to his back and launching it across the room. Sam didn’t spare a moment as he picked up the book, spun on his heels and, snatching the candle as an afterthought, raced back up the stairs and out the window before he could be assaulted again.

Panting, bent over his own knees and attempting to overcome the surge of adrenaline, Sam experienced a moment of guilt when it occurred to him that he had likely just sent Susannah’s cat flying across a room and had possibly hurt it. He glanced back at the house. 

Had he known that Sam was considering putting off salting and burning the objects in order to go and check on an animal that he had mistaken for a malevolent spirit, John would have had a choice word or three to say. 

It was sheer luck that the spirits hadn’t manifested while he’d been in there. Reminding himself of his priorities, Sam lit a fire in the pit he’d fashioned and picked up the candle from where he’d left it on the ground.

“Wait!” a voice called, sounding somewhat far away, but frantic all the same. Sam twisted around and scanned the woods, concerned that his fire had been spotted from the road despite the shelter provided by the mill. He saw no sign of anyone. 

Turning back around, Sam dropped the candle into the flame. The fire sparked and hissed, but the wax of the candle didn’t melt. “Sonofabitch!” the voice shouted again, distinctly male and throaty, and sounding much closer than it had been before.

Sam ignored the shout, his attention captured by the candle that was resting, undamaged, in the center of his fire. Around him, a strange wind picked up and he could see that the wick of the candle was alight, burning with a black flame. “Huh,” he said.

From the direction of the house, a great rumbling and clattering started, surprising him with the sheer volume of the noise and he spun on his heels, watching as green-blue light flickered on, then off, and staccato bursts of blindingly bright light illuminated the sky above the mill like the Aurora Borealis. 

The clattering rumble increased in volume, enough that Sam had to cover his ears. Glancing about, he worried that the noise and the light would bring the police.

As suddenly as it had started, it all stopped. The whole house went dark and quiet, but instead of relief it felt like the calm before the storm. Sam had just begun to move toward the mill when the little wooden house began to glow once again, this time with an orange flickering light. 

Candles, Sam realized with no small amount of confusion. “What the hell?” 

“A virgin lit the fucking candle!” the voice hissed, and it was right on top of him. Sam spun on his heel and tried to see through the darkness, but there was nothing there, not even a faint silhouette in the shadows, and then he was distracted by laughter: sharp and high and cackling with rich delight. Sam shivered. 

“You idiot!” the voice was ranting. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Shh!” Sam hissed as he crept closer to the house; there was definitely movement inside of it. 

“Don’t go over there!” the voice was saying. “Come over here! God dammit!” Sam peered through a window and froze, unable to process what he was seeing.

The Sanderson Mill was lit not by the electric sconces used during the day, but by candles. A warm fire burned in the hearth, and another flickered beneath the cauldron that sat in the center of the room. 

Three women were moving about inside; each in a long dress and brown leather boots laced passed the ankle. They looked as if they had stepped out of a history book about the American settlers, except they did not quite seem like friendly pilgrims.

The tallest of the three had dark curly red hair pinned up loosely on her head, some of it falling down to frame her oval face. The dark redness of her hair brought out the rich green of her dress and made Sam think of Christmas, until he caught sight of her distressingly long nails and all thoughts of festive cheer lodged in his throat. 

She had a small heart-shaped mouth, and round eyes hidden behind even rounder spectacles. She paced like a prowling cat, running a hand idly over the old bookcase and across the cluttered desk, only to be jostled from her reverie by another woman, who was in the process of spinning in slow circles about the room.

The second woman had light blond hair hanging passed her shoulders, falling in gentle curls and gleaming, drifting away from her body and fluttering in bright flashes of gold light as she spun. She was beautiful. Sam was momentarily fascinated by the carefree way she leaned her head back, smiling blissfully as she moved, her hands out like a dancer, full of grace in the sheer and unabashed joy of movement. Her dress was a dark red, but it was tattered and Sam was certain that it would have been considered indecent when she had last worn it, which was, he thought with a queasy stomach, back in 1693, apparently.

At the center of the room, standing by the cauldron and peering into its depths was a plumper figure in a plain brown-orange dress, whose black hair twisted into braids that hung heavily on either side of her rounded face. She had a soft smile and wide blue eyes, and Sam was almost charmed by her childlike innocence until she tipped her chin up and said, “Winnie, I smell a child,” with such sharp and disturbing delight that Sam was staggering back from the window and tripping over his own feet before he even realized he was moving.

“Great,” said that disembodied voice. 

On the ground with his head still spinning, Sam noted that the voice sounded at about ear-level despite the fact that he was flat on his back. “Now you listen to me,” it said. “Grab the book and lets get out of here.”

Sam tracked the voice to two glowing points of unearthly light hovering just at eye-level in his sprawled position. Then the shadowed figure stepped forward and was illuminated by the fire. 

Sam blinked. “You’re a cat.”

“You’re an idiot,” the saucy ball of fur retorted.

“You just talked,” Sam pointed out, helpfully.

“I’m gonna do a hell of a lot more than that if you don’t pick up the goddamned spell book and start running!” The front door of the house creaked open, and the voices of the women became louder as they stepped out side. 

Hurriedly, Sam rolled over and grabbed the book as well as his bag, stopping long enough to throw some dirt on the fire as the cat hissed, “Smokey thanks you, now can we just go!” and then they were running in the general direction of the Impala.

“There he is!” shouted the dark haired one, who Sam idly realized must be Mary Sanderson, pointing triumphantly at him as he fled. “I knew I smelled a child!”

“A _boy_!” Sarah rejoiced, clapping her hands as she danced down the front steps of her home.

Sam pulled open the door of the Impala and tossed in both the bag and the book, pausing just long enough for the cat to leap onto the seat and over onto the passenger’s side. “Shit,” he said, twisting to look back toward the mill. “I forgot the candle.”

“Leave the candle,” the cat snarled.

“What is that dark beast?” the red headed woman asked, squinting through her glasses, as Sam slid behind the wheel and pulled the door closed, cranking the ignition with enough force he almost winced. His dad would kill him if he knew his son was running around leaving potentially dangerous magical items lying around for anyone to find and use. Willfully, he shoved the thought from his mind.

The car purred to life, its lights flashing on and catching the three sisters in its glare. Sam stamped on the gas pedal as the cat shouted, “Go go!” and behind them, growing consistently smaller in the rear-window, the Sanderson sisters screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

The bright streetlights illuminated the costumed people walking and laughing along the sidewalks of Salem when Sam finally released the death-grip he had on the steering wheel and let out a breath. 

“So, there are three seventeenth century witches stumbling around Salem. How bad can that be, exactly?” he muttered to himself.

“Bad,” the cat said from where it sat, perched on the backrest of the front seat.

Sam cast a slanted look at the cat and realized that there were a number of things about the Sanderson legends that he had discounted a bit too hastily. “You’re Dean Thackeray, aren’t you.”

“It’s lovely to meet you,” the cat snarked in a smoothly sarcastic tone. “Idiot Virgin Who Lit the Candle.” 

Sam blinked, as startled by the name, as he was irked at the reference to his inexperience. 

“That’s what you’re calling me?” he choked out.

“Oh, I’ve come up with some other names for you.”

Sam huffed in amusement. He didn’t know what it said about his sanity that he was driving down the street talking to a cat, an insolent one at that, and actually enjoying the company. 

“My name is Sam.” All was quiet for a moment and then he said, “Aren’t you a little crass for someone who was born in the seventeenth century?”

There was a slight grumbling and the cat muttered, “Want to know how long I’ve been a cat?” Sam figured that it must have been somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred years. In that span of time, Dean Thackeray was bound to pick-up a thing or two; one of those things, apparently, was a pretty bad attitude.

Sam pulled into his spot at the Bluebird Motel and turned off the engine, shoving the spell book into his bag, which he proceeded to sling over his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry I lit the candle, okay? I was just trying to help.” 

Apparently that statement was so ridiculous the cat didn’t even have an appropriate comeback. He followed Sam through the door of his motel room, his tail standing up in the air, the end of it curling left and then right in regal agitation. He hopped up onto Sam’s bed without so much as a ‘by your leave’. 

Then the fluffy black tyrant took a good look around, its nose tipping back, no doubt smelling the lines of salt. Sam tossed down his bag and began unloading the weapons from it. 

“Dude, seriously,” the cat said. “ _What the hell_?”

“I’m a hunter,” Sam explained. The cat gazed at him blankly. Sam frowned. “You’ve been kicking around here for over three hundred years and you’ve never heard of a hunter?”

“Yeah, I know those: deer, moose, taxidermy, heads-on-the-wall . . .”

“No, man,” Sam said. “A _hunter_. Like, ghosts, poltergeists, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night type hunter.” Once again, an unnervingly blank green stare. “I hunt things that are not … natural.” Sam scratched his head, wondering how much of the modern world the cat had absorbed over the years. “Things that are _super_ natural, okay?”

“Like the witches.” 

“Yeah!” Sam said. “Yeah, exactly like that.”

“So, what stage of the hunt is this? I mean, they were dead, and you brought them back to life… is that a good stage?”

Sam flexed his grip on the wheel. “You’re still pissed at me.”

“Damned right, I’m pissed at you.” The cat was back on its feet, its tail twitching. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been living in this crap town, trying to stop idiots from bringing those bitches back?”

“A long time?”

“A long time!” the cat said. It was pacing. “Do you know how many idiot teenagers want to go into that place to hang out at Halloween? People who want to smoke up and then decide to play with fire? People who _dare_ each other?” The cat paused to glower at him. “That’s a lot of idiots that I stopped from doing something truly moronic.”

“I was trying to _help_!” Sam reiterated, and then a thought occurred to him. “Wait a minute. It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who tried to burn down the museum. There never was a ghost!”

“What ghost?” the cat asked. “Of course it was me. I pulled the candle out and you better believe that thing is unwieldy, and I started the fire. It would have all been over and done with, once I got the damned thing buried.”

“Right, because the candle can’t burn,” Sam said, mostly to himself.

“Right,” apparently the cat wasn’t finished snarking. “Because if you add a fire to a magical candle, you get a _lit_ magical candle.”

“How was I supposed to know it was magical? Most things melt when they’re tossed in the fire. Or burn. Either one would have been completely fine by me.”

“How many legends does it take for people to leave well enough alone? Only the black flame from the candle itself can actually melt the candle.” Exhausted and out of arguments, they both retreated to their respective corners. The cat sauntered to the middle of the bed, tail still twitching side to side, and then it curled around suddenly and began to groom the damned thing. Sam collapsed onto the chair at the desk, flipping the pages of the spell book idly until the cat hissed, _“Don’t touch the book.”_

Sam held up his hands, then closed the book and sat for a moment. 

“What do we do?” he turned to face the cat realizing for the first time that, for all its insults, Dean Thackeray had been trying to help him. “I mean,” Sam continued. “What do they want? How do we stop them?”

The cat sat, its back tall, its tail finally resting still on the blanket. 

“It’s the children,” Dean explained. “The last time, they were stealing kids from their beds, calling them out to the woods and using some sort of spell.” Dean trailed off, lost in thought. 

“The spell, what did it do?” Sam prompted.

“It made her . . . them glow . . . the kids,” Dean said, his voice hushed. Sam recalled suddenly that Dean had been alive when it had happened before. It had been his sister the Sanderson sisters had taken. It was likely his own sister Dean was thinking of as he recounted the effects of the spell. 

“The witches breathed in the light and then she was gone,” the cat continued, still speaking in a low tone. “She didn’t move…the kids didn’t move. But the witches were different, younger.”

Sam mulled that over. “Maybe it was a spell that would reveal life-force, enabling it to be consumed,” he thought aloud. “It would have to be children, because they’d have more to give. Why didn’t they work the spell on you?” The cat rolled its shoulders in a way that Sam assumed meant the thing was trying to shrug. “You pissed them off, didn’t you?” Dean’s tail twitched and Sam huffed to himself.

“I still can’t get over that the Sanderson sisters are actual evil witches, and I brought them back,” he found himself saying.

“You think the villagers would have hanged someone completely innocent?” 

“Well,” Sam said. “Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.” He could see the cat was mustering up a retort and quickly continued, “Besides, every single witch I’ve encountered has never worked magic like what you’re telling me. They’ve been fundamentally good people using their powers to help those in need. Not… this... How do they even do this?”

Once again, Dean looked woefully unimpressed with Sam’s intellect. “Witches make a pact with the devil,” he said, like Sam was slow.

“Are you seriously spouting _The Malleus Maleficarum_ at me? Because that book is the most …” but trailed off as mentioning a book made him think about the book he had stuffed in his bag, which in turn recalled to him Susannah’s thorough description of it. He grabbed the spell book and waved it at Dean. “Why did you make me take this?”

The cat blinked at him. Sam realized the cat’s eyes were a deep green. “It’s Winifred Sanderson’s spell book,” Dean said.

“And?”

“And if the Devil wants Winifred Sanderson to have it, I’m pretty sure _we_ want to make sure she never gets it,” Dean explained. “Also, it contains the spell she worked on the kids.”

“You’re sure she won’t have that memorized?”

“How am I supposed to know what they memorized?” the cat asked, glaring. “Seriously. Do you think I was hanging round the old mill with a bunch of freakin’ witches? Who do you think I am? ”

“Look,” Sam said. “I get that you’re pissed, and that’s fine. You have every right to be. But right now there are three seventeenth century witches fresh out of their graves and no doubt looking for us. This whole defensive, cranky kitty routine is not helping, so you need to calm. Down.”

“I’ll show you a cranky kitty,” Dean muttered, but he curled up into a tiny black ball of fur on the corner of Sam’s bed and then said, “It was complicated, there were a lot of ingredients. I doubt they’d have memorized it.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Good. Well, that’s something.” He adopted his most authoritative voice and said, “We have to trust each other, okay? This is what I do. I’ve been raised to deal with this stuff since I’ve been a kid, alright? We’ll figure this out.”

“Alright, hotshot,” Dean said. “So what do we do first?”

“The first thing we need to do is figure out the first thing _they’re_ likely to do.”

 

The first thing the Sanderson sisters were likely to do, apparently, was put a little protective bubble around the whole of the city. Sam watched the spell ripple through the air like a fine mist. In the parking lot, a man, who had been fumbling with his motel room keys, suddenly yawned and stretched, and then curled up to sleep in the middle of the walkway. “How can they work magic like that?” Sam muttered, in awe.

“It’s only affecting adults,” Dean pointed out. “Look.” Across the street, a group of teenagers were still staggeringly drunk, laughing and singing off-key.

“Okay.” Sam paced away from the window, running his hands through his hair as he tried to think. “That’s really powerful magic.” The cat hopped from the window ledge back to the bed and looked at him, apparently resolved to no longer comment on the completely obvious things that Sam stated. “That’s…pretty serious magic.”

“How about coming back from the dead?” Dean added. “Is that pretty serious magic too?” When Sam glared at him the cat blinked guileless eyes and said, “What? I’m trying to be helpful.”

“We’ve got the spell book,” Sam continued. “Which means they can’t hurt the kids until they find us, right?”

“No,” Dean said. “They’ve got powers aplenty without it. They just can’t suck their lives out.”

“Oh.” He collapsed back into his chair, his mind racing. Witches, he knew, were human. They might have powers they claimed from various sources, but they were human. Short of blasting them full of bullets, Sam couldn’t see a way to bring a true and final end to the Sanderson sisters.

“We got nothing,” Dean hopped off the bed. 

“Where are you going?”

“As nice as it would be to wrap this whole thing up right here in this motel room, it’s not gonna happen. Right now they’re out there trying to find that book, to start sucking the lives out of little kids. Do you have some idea what to do about that?”

Sam gave it some thought. He didn’t really know what he was up against. It wasn’t as if the history books went into a lot of detail about the abilities of the Sanderson witches in particular, though all signs pointed to some pretty powerful witches who had gone well and truly darkside. Maybe there was some truth to what Dean said about pacts with the devil. Even if it wasn’t Satan, it could have just as easily have been a demon, and that wouldn’t make them any less threatening. He wasn’t sure that, if it came down to it, he could murder someone, which is what shooting the witches would mean.

“It was a spell, right?” Sam wondered. At the cat’s cocked head he elaborated, “They said that they’d rise again, but it was a spell. They needed the candle to be lit to complete the magic.”

“Yeah,” Dean said slowly.

“Well,” Sam said, feeling hopeful for the first time that night. “We just need to figure out how to reverse it!” 

It was almost midnight. Sam estimated that if the spell was contained in Winifred’s book, he could find a way to break it before twelve-thirty. He turned to the spell book, lying on the table where he had left it, and ignored Dean’s hissed warning not to open it. A moment later the cover of the book was slamming closed as Dean pounced on it. 

“You said their spells were in here,” Sam explained. “If I can see what the spell was that they used to revive themselves, then maybe I can work something to counter it.”

Dean’s snarling hiss was loud and made Sam pause. The cat’s back arched dramatically in a perfect reproduction of a cardboard Halloween decoration he had seen on the restaurant where he’d had dinner. Dean’s fur was fluffed up, bristling in such a way that distorted the cat’s proportions. 

“You’re a witch too?” he snarled.

“No,” Sam huffed. “I’m a _hunter_.”

“Right,” Dean said, his tone wry. “I see the difference.” He swatted Sam with his front paw. “No reading from this book.”

“I don’t think you understand the plan.”

“I don’t think you understand _this book_ ,” Dean said. “It’s Winifred’s book, okay? It wants to go back to her, it’s bound in magic so thick you’d go cross-eyed trying to understand it, and it’s wholly and completely evil. Okay? Bad book,” he said, once again in a tone that implied Sam was especially dimwitted. “Don’t wake it up, don’t open it, don’t read it.”

“Wake it up?” Sam frowned in confusion until Dean’s exasperation made him connect the dots. “Oh, ew! That’s a real eye?” He pulled off the flannel button-down he’d been wearing and wrapped it around the book, then took another shirt from his duffel to put on in its place, still sneaking leery glances at the square bulk wrapped in flannel. “Okay, so the book is out. But I still think the spell-reversal theory is sound. Before, I thought whatever was going on in the house was the result of angry spirits who were tied to an object. If you destroy the object, then the spirits die as well, maybe the spell works in the same way.” 

The cat twitched its tail. Sam glared, “Don’t give me that look, I’ve done this before.” Dean grumbled again, but otherwise kept quiet. “Listen, all we need to do,” Sam continued, “is find a way to destroy the focus of the spell. It’s got to be the Black Flame Candle. Without it, they disappear.”

The cat was staring at him, its dark green eyes utterly focused and intense. Sam squirmed under the stare, mentally reviewing what he had said in an effort to see if he had uttered anything that might warrant the incredibly derisive glare he was receiving. “What?”

The cat flicked its tail once. “As a hunter,” Dean said. “Do you do a lot of research? Try to learn as much as you can about what you’re getting into before you go at the thing?”

“Well,” Sam said, feeling his face heat. Maybe he had been a bit incautious in this instance. He’d been so certain that the incidents at the Mill were the result of malevolent spirits that he hadn’t entertained any other possibility. Still, he said, somewhat hesitantly, “Yeah…”

“Yeah,” Dean said, sounding very much as if he were building up to something. “And you’re a professional right, been doing this since you were practically a fetus…”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m just curious how you missed the fact that the candle is _indestructible_?”

Sam blinked, that would make things a bit more complicated, if it were true. Also, had he known that, he certainly would have developed a different tactic, back when he’d thought he was hunting ghosts. “Well,” he said. “Have you ever tried to destroy it?”

Dean sniffed. “No.”

“Did the townspeople? Or a priest, or I don’t know, anyone that you know of?”

“No knife could cut it.” 

“But that was all anyone tried?” The stretched silence was enough of an answer, Sam’s confidence continued to rebuild. “Okay, then I need to get to that candle.” He grabbed up his own journal, which contained some things that he thought might work on the candle, as well as his gun and knives. He left the iron blade, considering that wouldn’t do much good, but he took a flask filled with salt. 

Prepared, Sam set off toward the door only to be stopped by Dean, equally authoritative saying: “You’re not leaving this book alone.” It was a valid point, so Sam hefted it and locked the motel door. 

He pulled out an old messenger bag from the trunk of the car that he stuffed the spell book into, and, almost as an afterthought, raided the wooden lock-box inside which he kept some protective herbs for emergency, and was en route to the driver’s door when Dean once again disrupted him.

“What are you doing?” the cat asked, with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing,” Sam said quickly, not wanting to once again be accused of witchcraft. He paused by the driver’s door, prepared to unlock it.

“You’re going to drive that thing out there? Really?”

“You have a problem with my car?”

“No, not at all,” Dean said. “Did you want to wave a giant flag and blast the Mexican Hat Dance, too, or do you think this thing will attract enough attention?” he sighed. “Just take us to the graveyard. I’ll get us past that.”

______________________________

Dean’s solution was to travel through the old Salem crypt, which extended underground from the graveyard until it intersected the newer sewer system. Dean claimed that from there, they would be able to travel almost directly to the museum. Something that was proven accurate when, after a long trek through damp, foul smelling drains, Dean finally directed Sam to climb a ladder of metal rails. They popped up just in front of the Sanderson Mill parking lot.

The house was glowing dimly in the night, candles still flickering inside as Sam ducked over the low stone wall and jogged further into the woods. “Come on,” he said to Dean. “I left the Black Flame Candle at the back of the house.” 

He didn’t wait to see if Dean followed and, after checking the doused fire he had made, returned empty handed. “Where is it? It wasn’t there.”

“Where else?” Dean said, his front paws perched on the window ledge, peering inside. “Well, the good news is that they don’t seem to be inside.”

“What?” Sam peered in through the window. “Where could they have gone?”

“They’re looking for the book,” Dean said, as if it were obvious. For all that he sounded blasé, Sam could tell by the way the cat’s ears were constantly twitching, pivoting in different directions as he scanned the various night sounds, that Dean was in fact just as leery about the return of the sisters as Sam. “It’s probably better if we keep moving, I don’t know if they have a way to track it.”

“I’m already ahead of you,” Sam said, he opened the satchel to reveal the book. It was still wrapped in his shirt, but was now packed with a few dried out crusty plants. “These should weaken any tracking spells, it should buy us some time.” Sam narrowed his eyes at the cat. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not a witch.”

“Alright, _Samantha_ ,” Dean said. “Let’s go.”

Sam blinked as the cat squeezed through the window. “Was that?” he frowned, not quite able to completely believe. “Was that a _Bewitched_ reference, or are you just being a dick?”

Sam pulled open the window and squeezed through, following Dean. He dropped near-silently into a crouch and glanced around. The smell of mildew, age, and dust that had lingered in the old mill had been chased away by the new smell of burning cedar logs from the roaring fire, mixed with the acridly sweet odor of a smoking bundle of herbs in a little brass dish. 

Sam sniffed the air by the dish tentatively, trying to decipher the herbs in the hopes that he might gain some insight into the spell the witches had been working, but the crisp scent of the cedar wood overpowered the smell of the small bundle.

The Black Flame Candle had been returned to the wooden stand and it burned with a steady black flame. The wax had melted a considerable amount given the time that had past, reduced to almost half its previous height. Dean, who sat perched on the empty glass casement that once held the spell book, turned expectantly to Sam. “So?”

“Right.” Setting the satchel aside, Sam pulled out a bottle of holy water and poured it over the candle. There was a fierce hissing sizzle and a wafting of smoke that reeked of sulfur, old milk, and burning asphalt. The candle smoked wherever the holy water touched, but the flame was not doused. “That doesn’t prove anything,” Sam said to Dean’s look that clearly smacked of ‘I told you so’.

Twenty minutes later and Sam had run through every exorcism he knew. He had cast spells, submerged it in water, covered it in salt, cut at it with a machete, shot it with a gun, and stabbed at it with a knife. 

“Okay,” Sam was finally forced to conclude. “I think the Black Flame Candle might be indestructible.”

There was an awkward stretch of silence as Sam worked on regaining his breath after his exertions. Dean just sat there, glaring in a markedly bland fashion, which looked incredibly feline. 

“Alright,” Dean said finally. “My turn.” He hopped off the glass case and trotted across the floor to the window.

“Your turn?” Sam queried. 

“We tried your way, and the candle was indestructible,” Dean said, pausing on the window ledge. He flicked his tail as he said, “So now we go to the source of the magic.”

Sam wasn’t quite following. “How are we supposed to know which demon they struck a deal with?”

“It was the Devil,” Dean said.

Sam huffed. “It wasn’t _the_ Devil. That’s something _The Malleus Malefecarum_ and all those other books almost always get wrong. Demons make these sorts of deals, not Lucifer. The question is which demon made this deal. I mean, there are at least seven that I can think of just off the top of my head that specialize in magic, and you can’t exactly summon them for a brief chat.”

Dean had once again fixed him with a flat, unblinking stare. When Sam met his gaze, his right ear twitched. Finally, Dean asked, “Dude, _who are you_?”

“What?”

“Demons? Summoning? Are you _kidding_ me?”

“I’m a hunter,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. For all that Dean had apparently been keeping-up with the times, he was incredibly backward in some respects. “It goes with the territory, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Dean dismissed, not sounding quite convinced. “But I’m not talking about that demon stuff. I’m talking about the witches.”

“What about them?”

“Trial by fire: we torch the bitches.” 

 

Dean’s solution seemed extreme to Sam. The witches had not really done anything yet; well, they spelled all the adults of Salem into sleep, which, granted, seemed to suggest that their intentions were not entirely honorable. 

Still, he wasn’t convinced it warranted murdering them. Then again, he recalled the disappearances that he had found listed in the records of the town from when the Sanderson sisters had last walked the earth. At the time, Sam had sympathized with the historical town of Salem, and had even gone so far as to understand the desperation that must have spurred the townsfolk into believing that evil was living among them. He had not, however, believed that the three sisters who lived at the old mill had actually been guilty of the crime for which they were sentenced to death. He had been conditioned, he supposed, to always view the victims of the Witch Hunts as innocent scapegoats who had been targets of hysteria and fear.

Having encountered the Sanderson sisters, however, Sam had adjusted his initial opinion, and was willing to believe Dean Thackeray when he said that they were evil witches, and it only followed that they were responsible for the disappearances of each of those children. 

They left the Black Flame candle on its pedestal; resigned to the fact that it was indestructible. Sam didn’t fancy running around with a lit candle, and it Dean assured him that in every other way, it was just a candle, so Sam let it be.

They trekked back along the side of the road. The dark woods gave way to the sculpted hedges and clipped gardens of private residences, some with lights on above their front doors, a few with the sprawled bodies of adults lying carelessly across the front steps or hanging half-in half-out of their vehicles. Salem seemed sinister in the moonlight, the sleeping figures looking dead as they lay, unmoving. It was late enough that Sam assumed most of the teenagers were still ensconced in house parties or nightclubs, though the closer they got to town, where the bodies lay sprawled across the sidewalk and sometimes in the road, there were an increasing number of teenagers panicking, some phoning for help on cellphones that never connected: no one was awake to answer their calls. 

The consequences of the spell began to sink in. It had all seemed relatively benign to him before: they were all just sleeping, which meant they could all simply wake-up. People were likely already dying, though. Doctors undoubtedly slept in the halls of the ICU, in the surgery rooms, in the trauma centers. It was suddenly less difficult for Sam to understand Dean’s hurried rush to dispatch the witches: they were, after all, only getting started. 

“Where are we going?” Sam asked as he kept pace with the cat. 

Dean was bounding down the sidewalk, looking very much as if he knew what he was doing, but at the question he came to a sudden stop and looked around. “The witches were burned after they were hanged,” he said. “So these can’t be their bodies, right? I mean, they were burned, there was nothing left.”

“Where were their ashes placed?”

Dean looked away. 

“I don’t know. I was … I wasn’t keeping close track at the start.” It occurred to Sam that Dean had likely gone to his family after he was turned, or tried to, at least. Sam could only imagine how the townsfolk had reacted to a black cat being in the area, especially on the heels of the discovery of the witches. Lord knows what would have happened if Dean had tried to actually talk to anyone. Sympathy, sharp and deep, hit him then, and Sam didn’t press the issue any further.

“There were no records I could find,” Sam said. “Would they have buried the ashes, do you think? Or would they have scattered them?” Dean could not reply with confidence. “It doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “Whatever happened to their bodies, it doesn’t change the fact that somehow they’re back.”

“You said before, that you would have salted and burned the bones except there were no bones,” Dean said thoughtfully and Sam nodded. “So if we salt and burn them now, that could count, right?” 

It was difficult for Sam to consider; they were not talking about bones, but bodies, living bodies, no less. “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Witches are people. If you kill a person, generally that’s it.” He paused. “Well, unless they come back as a ghost.”

“Ever dealt with a bunch of _people_ who’ve come back from the dead?”

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, wrinkling his nose. “Zombies aren’t much fun, either.”

“Zombies,” Dean said, and sounded a little dazed. “Right. So how did you deal with the … with the zombies?”

“Nailed him back into his grave with a silver stake.” Dean’s gaze held steady, his body entirely still except for his tail, flicking left and right rhythmically like a snake. “What?” Sam asked. “When are you going to get over this? I’m a hunter, this is what hunters do.”

“Well, these zombies don’t have graves.”

“I also don’t really think they’re zombies,” Sam admitted. “I mean, you said yourself their bodies were completely destroyed. Whatever spell they used to come back, it didn’t make them living dead. They are completely real and alive, and whole.”

“So, no silver stakes.” 

Across the way, a group of teenagers came staggering drunkenly out of a bar, undoubtedly having just taken advantage of the bartender and everyone else being incapacitated by the spell, and thus, unable to enforce any rules with regards to serving alcohol to minors. Sam glanced over and wondered what it looked like, him standing and having a conversation with a cat at the side of the road. 

Dean startled him from his thoughts as he said, “We’re back to burning them.”

Sam tipped his head to the side. “They’re not going to stand still while we build a pyre.”

“They don’t need to,” Dean said, hopping to his feet in a flash. “Come on!”

 

Without any idea where Dean was going, Sam found himself running blindly after the swiftly bounding dark shadow, somewhat dismayed to realize how difficult it was to keep-up with the bounding cat who now and again disappeared from view, only to reappear even further ahead. 

“Dean!” Sam shouted, relieved when the dark shadow came to a halt and glanced back. Sam caught up to him. “Where are we going?”

“To the—“ but Dean trailed off, his tufted ears swiveling and then, suddenly, he turned his head, gazing down the street.

“What do you hear?” Sam whispered, crouching down as if that would help them. 

Dean didn’t answer, but a second later, Sam heard it for himself: a soft trilling voice, calling with an aching sort of sadness that made the single syllable sound like a song, _“Book!”_

“What is that?”

“It’s them,” Dean said, glancing around quickly for some place for them to hide. Sam was distracted, however, when his satchel began twitching at his hip. “Keep hold of that,” Dean said. Sam glanced down at the bag and winced. Right, the book that was bound in human skin and had a human eye was trying to answer its mistress, vibrating in the bag with its impulse to somehow break free. “This way.” Sam followed, keeping low and hoping that the unnatural mist would shelter him from sight.

Luck, however, was not on their side. 

“Hello!” a voice chirruped, and Sam started violently because it had come from above him. He glanced up to see Sarah Sanderson perched side-saddle on her broom, her blond hair falling over one shoulder as she leaned down, one arm reaching for him. “Such a handsome boy.” Just as before, Sam felt himself drawn to her, some irresistible pull, like a siren’s song, bringing him into her thrall. “Come with me, my lovely one. I will take care of you.” 

A low hiss broke the spell as Sam jerked his head to the source of the sound to see Dean leaping off a trash canister and into the air, his claws outstretched. Sarah screamed as he swatted at her, pushing the furry body away even as Dean’s claws anchored into her cloak and her robes. 

“Dean Thackeray!” a voice called, rife with laughter as Sarah succeeded in swatting Dean off her body. He toppled to the ground and Sam lunged forward, catching the furry bundle in his arms before he could hit the cement. “My my. And look! You’ve made a little friend!”

“Winifred,” Dean snarled as he hopped from Sam’s arms onto the ground. 

“You wouldn’t by any chance, happen to know the whereabouts of my book?” Winifred Sanderson asked, peering down her sharply upturned nose at him. She was smirking in an imperious fashion; the awkwardly round spectacles making her brown eyes seem somehow smaller.

“I burned it,” Dean said.

Winifred laughed, joined by her two sisters; each of them floating above them on their broomsticks, their long dresses and cloaks hanging down, buffeted by the autumn wind. “I very much doubt that, my dear.” She leaned forward, drifting lower until the ends of her green dressed ghosted across Sam’s cheek. Her voice was low, an intimate whisper, as she said, “My book cannot be touched by fire.”

“Well, it burned just fine,” Dean insisted. Sam held himself completely still, hoping that he’d be forgotten and none of the sisters would notice the arm he kept pressed against the satchel that was shivering with the nearness of its mistress.

“Winnie,” a new voice said, so very young sounding, so very innocent. “I smell frankincense.” Sam kept very still and hid the wince he felt as the herbs he had used to mask the book were discovered one by one. “Dragon’s blood,” Mary added. “Sage, fennel,” she listed, drifted closer. “Arabic gum, aloe…”

Winifred sat up, drifting on her broom past her younger sister, caressing her cheek and patting her head as she went by. Her sharp eyes fell on Sam and then continued down to focus on his satchel. 

“What a strange mixture of things, Mary,” she said, and then turned to Dean. “Your little friend is a witch?”

“I’m not a witch,” Sam declared, exasperated, and then cringed–so much for being forgotten and ignored. 

“No?” Winifred asked. Then her look became dark and terrifying as she leaned forward, her face inches from Sam’s own. “You are trying to hide my book from me!” She reared back on her broom and once again sang-out her strange call, _“Book!”_ Sam stepped back, holding fast to the satchel, and pressed it hard against his side as the book shivered.

“Run!” Dean shouted, and Sam spun on his heel just as Winifred lunged forward. 

“Run as fast as you can, Dean Thackeray!” Winifred Sanderson shouted. “You cannot run forever! I will have my book, and then all the children of Salem will _die_!” Sarah and Mary were already after him as Sam darted left down a narrow alley, and pulled down a metal fire escape ladder, effectively blocked the space behind him so the witches could not sweep quickly in pursuit.

“Here!” Dean said, darting out ahead and turning a corner hastily. “Down, down,” he said, as he crawled behind a stack of wooden crates, completely hidden. Sam ducked down into the shadows, hiding as best he could.

“But Mary…” he began, falling silent when he could hear the sisters approaching. He held his breath as Sarah swooped around the corner.

“Beautiful boy!” she called. “My lovely boy, come and play with me.” Sam squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his back into the rough brickwork behind him.

“Mary!” Winifred said, bringing her broom to a stop beside the blonde and turning an expectant gaze to Mary.

“Mackerel,” Mary said with sad little frown. “Prawn. I smell… wasabi?”

“Useless!” Winifred cursed, jerking her broom into motion. 

Sarah rolled her eyes and made a face. “Useless?” Mary asked, her hurt little-girl voice almost making Sam forget himself and feel sympathy for her.

“Never useless, darling,” Sarah said, her tone consoling. “You know how she gets.”

“Sarah! Mary!” Winifred’s shrill voice echoed back, and Sarah rolled her eyes again. 

“She has a point, you know,” Mary said, her voice hushed. “It’s very important.”

“I know,” Sarah huffed, her broom ghosting forward alongside Mary’s. After a moment, both sisters disappeared.

“What’s important?” Sam wondered, when he had finished crawling out from his hiding place.

“They need the spell from the book,” Dean said, exasperation heavy in his tone.

“But why?” Sam said. “They look pretty young to me.”

“Don’t go nursing along that little crush of yours, Sammy,” Dean said, completely ignoring the dark glare Sam shot in his direction. “Sarah may look pretty but she’ll skin you alive and use what’s left of you for potion ingredients when she’s had her fill of you.”

Sam grimaced. “I take it that’s not just a saying?”

“No,” Dean said grimly, moving off in the opposite direction from the sisters. “It’s not.”

Sam found himself wondering about the certainty in Dean’s statement. Had it been a friend who fell victim to Sarah Sanderson? A neighbor? Had Dean stumbled upon the flayed remains himself, or was he only repeating town gossip? “Where are we going?” Sam asked.

“Our plans haven’t changed,” Dean replied. “We have to burn them. We’re going to the high school.”

 

The locks of the high school were laughable. Sam picked them in record time though Dean seemed entirely unimpressed. After several turns down long hallways, the reason for their break-in soon became clear to Sam as they passed row upon row of bright orange lockers, arriving at a room marked ‘Art Studio’. 

“Here,” Dean said, pausing by the blue metal door. Sam twisted the handle and followed Dean inside, comprehension dawning like a sun spilling over the horizon.

In the far corner of the room was a gently rounded stack of bricks, arching up to the ceiling. A plaque with the words, “WARNING’, printed in urgent black capitals. “A kiln,” Sam said. “A kiln?” He shook his head in disbelief. Dean’s plan was quickly falling into place, and Sam was grudgingly impressed. “Seriously?”

“You have a better idea? I’m all ears.” Sam did not, in point of fact, have a better idea. “Well, alright then,” Dean continued. “Bring the book.” 

Sam pulled open the heavy door to the kiln and peered inside cautiously. “This thing is massive.” He had never seen a kiln that size and was surprised the students of Salem had such an impressive art department in their high school, where ceramics were obviously heavily encouraged. 

Dean strode past him, through the door. “Donation from some big-shot pottery dude,” he said dismissively. “I’m sure the kids just _love_ it.” 

Sam rolled his eyes at the blatant sarcasm, following Dean inside the kiln, surprised that he only had to duck a little bit to fit inside. In his opinion, it seemed like overkill.

“Put the book over here,” Dean said from his perch on one of the kiln shelves. 

Reluctantly, Sam opened the satchel and pulled the spell book from its nest of protective herbs that had been rather successful, Sam thought, at masking the book’s presence from Winifred Sanderson. Placing it on the shelf Dean had indicated, Sam unwrapped the shirt in which the book was still bundled and stared down at the closed eyelid on the cover. 

“Wake up,” Dean ordered. 

“Uh,” Sam said, and then hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Shush,” Dean said.

“Dean,” Sam said, shifting forward and reaching for the cat, who had swatted at the book and looked to be preparing for another swipe. 

Before he could grab Dean, the eyelid on the book’s cover pulled back, revealing a bright blue eyeball that rolled to look first at Dean, and then over to Sam who stood, frozen in place, his arms still extended. It focused back on Dean. 

“Do you remember me?” the cat asked. The book kept staring. “I’m going to destroy you, but first you’re going to help me.” Sam felt his body jerking involuntary in surprise. “You’re going to show me the spell that will turn me back into a human.” The book blinked. Dean swatted it again and hissed. “My friend’s a witch, he’s going to work the magic and turn me back. And then he’s going to send you back to hell. Go on Sam.” Sam met Dean’s look with a bewildered gaze of his own. He was still trying to catch up with Dean’s plan. 

“Open it and find the spell.” Dean spoke slowly again, in that horribly patronizing voice.

“Open it?” Sam repeated. Was Dean crazy? Wasn’t he the one who had ordered Sam to never open that book? Wasn’t he the one who had made a whole speech about how the book was entirely evil and would fuck with them like the One Ring fucked with everyone who wasn’t Sauron?

“Open it,” Dean repeated, slow and clipped like he was waiting for Sam to get with the program. Sam hesitated. The book wanted to go back to Winifred Sanderson. Winifred was out there, on a broom, calling for the thing. What was Dean playing at? Oh. Right. Sam shook his head and stepped forward. 

“Don’t worry Dean, I’m going to turn you into a human again.” He said it with a lot of bravado, which probably sounded a bit forced, and he tried to keep from wincing as he touched the book’s cover and opened it, momentarily surprised that there was no resistance. For all that it was bound in human skin with a big working eyeball on the cover, Sam had imagined that it could exert its own force now that it was awake, try to keep its pages closed to intruders or something. It seemed the sort of thing that might be helpful, considering what the book apparently contained.

Of course, the book might also help them. They were, after all, giving it exactly what it wanted: an opportunity to call to its owner. Sure enough, as soon as Sam had flipped it open to a random page, a burst of light shot up from its pages. 

“What the…” he said, raising an arm to protect his eyes from the light. The entire book glowed in a golden sparkling rush of light, like a beam of hot summer sunlight. 

“Shit!” Dean said. “They’ll find us for sure!” The book glowed brighter. Sam made as if to close the book but Dean was already leaping off a shelf in the kiln and bounding toward the door. “No time! Come on!”

Following Dean’s lead, Sam left the book and slipped into a space in an art supply cupboard, as Dean hopped onto a shelf and hunkered down. 

“Could you have sounded more fake?” Dean quietly snarked.

Sam snorted. “Oh please. ‘There’s no time! They’ll find us for sure!’” Sam mimicked, his voice pitched high. They fell silent as the quick clicking of heels began to approach.

“I don’t sound like that,” Dean muttered. Suddenly, the door to the art class flew open, and in staggered all three Sanderson sisters. 

“Where is it?” Winifred said. _“Book!”_

“Winnie,” Mary said, frowning and turning slowly in the room. Sam winced and held his breath, but Mary was interrupted as her older sister gasped and said, “There you are!”

“It’s there?” Mary asked, sounding oddly hopeful. “You’ve found it?”

“Oh, what have they done to you?” Winifred crooned as she stepped over the threshold and into the kiln, Mary a single step behind her.

“Is it there?” Sarah demanded. “You’ve found it? You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, you idiot,” Winifred said, her voice hard and edged and completely unlike the fond crooning of a moment before. “How many other spell books like this do you think are out there?”

Sarah huffed and kicked an art bench. “You mean, how many ugly old books? Is that a trick question?” she snarked. 

“You!” Winifred said, stomping out of the kiln and grabbing her younger sister by the ear. “You will apologize this instant, you ungrateful little nincompoop! You owe your life to my precious little book!”

“Ow!” Sarah whinged as she was pulled into the kiln by her sister, until she was standing over the book. “I apologize!” she said. She scratched at her hip through her dress and frowned. “It’s hot in here.”

“Winnie…” Mary said.

“What?” Winifred snarled, her concentration still entirely on her book. She was answered when the door to the kiln slammed shut. “Well,” she said, turning on her youngest sister. “Open it.”

“I can’t,” Mary pointed out. “There is no handle.”

“Winnie, it’s very hot in here,” Sarah.

“Shut up!” Winnie said, pacing toward the door with a frown. “Well, push it, then.” 

Mary pressed her weight against the door, but it did not budge. “Sarah, help me.”

Sarah joined her and they pushed again. Irritated, Sarah kicked at it. “It will not budge. I feel like I’m melting it’s so hot. Can neither of you not feel it?”

“I can,” Mary whispered.

“Never mind,” Winifred said. “We have the book. We will use magic.” She reached for her book and then cursed as the metal lock burned her fingers. She hissed, and then turned panicked eyes to look around her. “It is hot,” she said, ignoring her sisters as they shared a pointed look. “Too hot... What is this place?”

“A strange room,” Sarah pointed out. “There’s nothing in it. What purpose does it serve?”

“Mary.” Winifred staggered back and grabbed her sister. “What do you smell?”

“Earth,” Mary said. “And ash. And fire.” A moment later, it was too hot for them to do much else but burn.

 

“Do you think it’s really over?” Sam wondered as they walked back to the Impala. He had waited at the high school, long enough to be confident the plan had worked. He had also retrieved the spell book from the kiln; there had been nothing else in the room, which had been a relief. The book had been asleep once again, and Sam had taken that as a good sign, but had wrapped it up in his jacket just the same.

“I don’t know,” Dean admitted. “I think so.”

They were silent for a stretch. “What are you going to do now? I mean, now that you don’t need to worry about a virgin lighting the candle? By morning, all the wax will probably have melted away. There won’t anything more to light.”

Dean cocked his head to the side. “I have no clue.”

“Come with me,” Sam offered. “I’m serious. We worked well together tonight, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind the company.” Dean didn’t give an answer, but there was a glint in the greenness of his eyes that Sam though might mean the cat was at least considering it. “I promise,” he said, teasingly. “We won’t always hunt witches.”

Dean was quiet, but when they reached the Impala, he hopped inside. 

“I dunno,” he said. “I can’t really picture myself messing with herbs and spells.” He snorted as Sam started the engine and then added, more quietly, “I can’t stand research, and I don’t know how handy I’ll be in a fight.”

“You’ve managed pretty well so far,” Sam said. “Think about it.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ve been pretty quiet,” Sam pointed out, as he pulled into the parking lot of the motel and cut the engine. 

Dean twitched an ear but otherwise did not comment. 

“Dean?”

“I’ve been a cat for three hundred and seven years,” Dean said. “I guess I just thought…whatever.”

Sam shifted his gaze briefly to the where Dean sat. “What did you think?”

“That when it was over, and they were really gone for good, that maybe I could be too.” Dean thrashed his tail once in agitation, glanced at Sam then away. “I could maybe move on.”

Sam frowned, but there really wasn’t anything he could say to that. The curse on Dean had made him immortal, and Sam couldn’t think of anything lonelier. He looked out the windshield of the car and found himself frowning harder. “They’re still asleep.”

Dean hopped up onto the dash and peered out at the slumped body of the man who had fallen asleep in the motel parking lot. “They probably just need to sleep off the spell.”

Sam considered that. He’d thought that, with the witches gone, the release from the spell would be instantaneous. Then again, maybe it related to the specifications of the spell that was cast. After all, Dean was still a cat, but he’d been cursed to live in that form for eternity. Sam didn’t think the witches had cast such a drastic spell on the townsfolk. 

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he said, nodding. “I think you’re right.” He opened the door and waited for Dean to follow him out into the cold night air. “Come on. We’ll figure this out, alright?”

______________________________

It was late, or early. The television was on, _House on Haunted Hill_ playing at a near-silent volume, though not quiet enough to dull the sinister tones of Vincent Price’s voice. Sam could remember seeing the film when he’d been a kid, staying up late because his dad was on a hunt. -He’d felt so grown-up, taking care of himself while his dad had been gone. It was just one night alone, but Sam had stayed up because there had been no one to tell him to get to bed, and he’d watched the film and been utterly terrified as a result. He’d spent the night curled into a corner of the sofa, every single light in the apartment turned on, huddled beneath a mound of every blanket and pillow he could find. When his dad had come home, he’d scooped Sam up and tucked him under the covers of his bed, and Sam had fallen asleep while his dad’s pen scratched across the pages of his journal.

He hadn’t thought about it much, reveling in the freedom of being on his own, but Sam realized that he’d also been feeling lonely. He couldn’t imagine feeling that way for three hundred years, but, for all that Dean knew people like Susannah, who gave him cream and petted him, no one but Sam knew who Dean was. He had no one to talk with.

On the bed, Dean lay in a coiled ball, curled up in the gap between two pillows, his nose tucked beneath his fluffy tail. Sam watched him for a bit, his mind offering images of what it might be like to travel with a cat, interspersed with what it must have been like for Dean to have lived through so many years. There had to be a way to reverse the spell, some way to undo what had been done. 

Sam glanced over to the book, which was once again wrapped up in one of his flannel button-downs. With the Sanderson sisters dead, there couldn’t be any harm in glancing through it. Even if all he could find was the name of the spell Winifred had used to turn Dean into a cat, it would give him a place to start searching for a way to undo the magic. Carefully, Sam peeled back the folds of the shirt, making certain that the eye of the book was shut before he flipped it open.

There was no helpful table of contents, he noted with some sense of disappointment, but it did not take many pages for him to learn that the book’s contents were not only nasty and sinister, but often sadistic as well. Sam spared most of the spells only a quick glance before moving on, but with each page he felt a little bit queasier. Turning past a potion recipe that seemed to permanently enslave the drinker to the brewer’s desires and, among other disturbing ingredients, called for a rabbit’s heart to be plucked, still beating, and stuffed with sugar cane, Sam winced but persisted. 

From his spot on the bed, Dean’s furry body jerked in one sharp twitchy spasm before his eyes blinked open and he raised his head, green eyes glaring. 

“What did I tell you about that damned book, Sam?”

“I’m sorry!” Sam closed the book, somewhat guiltily. “I just thought, with the witches dead, it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe I could help you.”

Dean hopped neatly from the bed onto the cover of the book, curling his tail neatly over the eye, which Sam noted was still closed. 

“Nothing good can come of it.”

“All I need to know is what curse Winifred used to turn you,” Sam insisted. “That’s all I was looking for.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dean glared long enough for Sam to give-up on his plan to read the spell book, before he stepped off it. Stretching out his left back leg and fanning his impressive claws in a wide spread that made his foot more closely resemble a bird’s talons, he began to groom himself. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Sam sighed as he re-wrapped the book. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I couldn’t settle, I guess.” He set the book on top of his duffel and perched on the edge of the bed, toeing off his socks before he glared at the quietly purring shadow that, while his back was turned, had relocated to the bed and lay in an eloquent sprawl directly in the center of the bed. “Shove over.”

“You shove over,” Dean mumbled petulantly as Sam began jostling the pillows that were bracketing him. Sam ended up precariously balancing on the edge of the mattress because Dean was only willing to adjust so much. He sank almost immediately into sleep despite the awkwardness of his position and his certainty that he wouldn’t be able to get any rest.

______________________________

Sam’s eyes jerked open sometime later. The sky was still dark and he estimated he couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour, maybe two. For a moment, Sam had no idea what woke him, until there is a gentle rapping at the motel door.

“Hello?” a little voice called, sounding so small, so helpless. “Is someone there? Please? Please, can you help me?” 

Sitting up in bed, Sam flashed a quick look and found Dean awake, standing on the mattress and twitching his tail.

“Don’t go near the window,” Sam whispered, because Dean was clearly considering hopping over to the ledge to see who was at the door. For all Sam knew, it really was a little kid, scared out of her mind and searching for help, but he didn’t believe in coincidences and he also didn’t believe in taking senseless risks. 

With his gun in hand, Sam staggered over to the door, still groggy as he glanced back at Dean, who had positioned himself ready to spring in case it really wasn’t just a little girl. Nodding once, Sam twisted the knob. 

He didn’t have a chance to react because as soon as the door was opened he was hit with streaks of unnaturally green lightning. 

“Step aside!” Winifred Sanderson said imperiously, dropping her hands back to her side to lift her dress carefully as she stepped over Sam’s prone body.

“Pretty kitty,” Sarah Sanderson crooned as she hopped over Sam and into the room, reaching to stroke Dean who hissed and swatted. 

Mary caught him before he could launch an attack: the youngest witch scooped him up awkwardly and stuffed him into a burlap sack. Sam watched as Dean writhed inside the bag, making the burlap spasm and dance as Mary hefted it high above her head and giggled in girlish amusement. 

“My book!” Winifred said, pinching Sam’s flannel shirt between her thumb and forefinger, as if it was filthy and unpleasant and she had no desire to touch it. She gathered up her book and spun around, her cloak swirling out behind her. “Sisters! We have it.” 

Sarah clapped and jumped, and Mary lowered the sack to her side, smiling brightly, and stepped back over Sam and through the door.

“Sarah,” Winifred ordered as she marched back into the night. “We’ve not much time. The candle is almost spent and dawn is swiftly coming. Fly now and summon the children. Fly!”

Sam was still sprawled on the floor, groaning and aching, incapable of bringing own body under control. “I’m an idiot,” he muttered. “It was a spell. Of _course_ it was a spell.” 

Just like the Black Flame Candle the Sanderson sisters themselves were protected, and they could not be damaged until the magic of their spell wore-off. Of course the fire could not have destroyed them. He struggled to sit up, fighting off the pain and the shivering aftershocks of the stinging energy Winifred had hit him with. 

“One night,” he muttered, as Winifred’s parting remark to her sister echoed in his head. It was like a final piece of a puzzle slotted into place and he was suddenly able to see the picture. “One night,” he repeated to himself again, with more confidence. 

Whatever the spell was that the sisters had cast before their deaths, it wasn’t a ‘get out of death free’ card. It was conditional. When the candle was spent, the magic would be undone, and Winifred’s comment strongly suggested that it was good for only a single night. Only for one night on Halloween, because that was when the veil between the living and the dead was weakest.

“So what’s the point?” Sam wondered. It didn’t make sense; why would the sisters return? Surely it was not just for one night of havoc before they retired to the grave. That seemed pointless.

With his head beginning to clear, Sam felt that he was missing something glaringly obvious. A moment later, a soft lilting song drifted in through the open window. It felt gentle and soothing and tantalizing and Sam sighed, drifting closer to the door without even realizing he had stood.

 _“Come little children,”_ the voice sang. _“I’ll take you away, into a land of enchantment…”_

Beyond the motel, Sam could see a mass of children and teenagers, all staggering with oddly synchronized steps down the road. Above them, drifting on her broom and singing sweetly, Sarah Sanderson flew.

Sam jerked backward, slamming his door shut and trying to overcome his urge to stagger out into the street. He lunged to his duffel bag, routing through his things until he drew out his bathroom kit and fumbled for his set of earplugs, stuffed in a side pocket. He’d bought them because his dad always insisted on sharing a room: it was cheaper. John Winchester, however, was one hell of a snorer.

Shoving the earplugs into his ears, Sam slumped down onto the edge of the mattress. The glaringly obvious thing he had been overlooking before the witches attacked, was the potion. The potion that had been used on Dean’s little sister, which had made the witches younger. If they could brew the potion again and steal a child’s life force, they would no longer be relying on the spell to keep them alive, the spell that made them impervious to harm until sunrise. 

Sam, idiot that he was, had led them right to the one thing they had been missing. “Stupid book.” 

______________________________

Crafting an elaborate plan, a particular skill of Sam’s, was not something that he had time for. The sisters now had everything they needed to get precisely what they wanted. Watching them massacre all the children of Salem by way of an elaborate potion, just so they could remain young and immortal, was absolutely out of the question.

With the streets clogged by a long line of slowly shuffling children, not unlike any number of zombie apocalypse films he had seen through the years, Sam was forced to maneuver the Impala mostly through side-streets, or risk being delayed to the point of inevitable failure. Time was of the essence.

It was four o’clock in the morning and Sam was navigating the Impala through the unnatural mist, around sprawled sleeping bodies of adults and through swarms of kids in a trance. The windows were rolled down and he was blaring an old tape of his dad’s, Black Sabbath ‘Fairies Wear Boots’, a surprisingly efficient way to knock a bunch of kids out a witch-induced trance, apparently. Sam gunned the engine and kept on.

Progress became impossibly slow, once he hit the usually deserted dark stretch of road off which the Sanderson Mill House was located. The music was working quite well, jolting the kids out of their hypnosis, but once they were no longer being compelled toward the house, the kids began to panic. Even more irritatingly, some took the pressing mass of their peers, and the music Sam was readily providing, as their cue to begin a spontaneous party, and promptly began to dance and cheer and generally make utter nuisances of themselves.

“This is the best Halloween ever!” one kid shouted with glee, staggering passed Sam’s car. 

Sam was not at all comfortable leaving the Impala in the road near a bunch of kids who were clearly idiots. Switching off the music, he pulled into the dark parking lot and locked the doors before running the rest of the way to the house.

Crouching down by the window to the left of the mill wheel, Sam cautiously peered inside. Two children were suspended from the ceiling by looped chains, rusty and aged but nonetheless strong. Sam’s music had obviously broken them free of Sarah’s trance, as their eyes were wide as they followed the witches moving about beneath them. Both of the captives, however, were tightly bound and could not move or even speak.

Over the fireplace Sam noted the burlap sack in which Mary had captured Dean; it was writhing steadily, which was both a relief and a horror. In the center of the room, the large black cauldron sat atop a red-orange fire, a bubbling, frothing mass of disturbing turquoise colored liquid filling it near to the brim. Mary Sanderson was stirring it with a giant wooden spoon, an apron tied over her orange dress.

“It’s no matter,” Winifred was saying, as Sam pulled himself through the upstairs window and belly-crawled across the floor. “All we need is one child. It will be nothing at all to recapture the little brats, after all, we’ll have all the time in the world!” She chuckled to herself, a raspy hiccupping sound that managed to emulate a cackle despite its low volume.

Sarah pouted and kicked her foot petulantly at the ground. “Nothing at all,” she repeated, somewhat bitterly. “I’d like to see _you_ summon all those children here.”

Winifred narrowed her eyes, spinning sharply around to face her youngest sister. “Suck in that lip, Sarah. Sniveling doesn’t suit you,” she scolded.

Sarah’s budding retort was cut-off as Mary leaned the wooden spoon against the rim of the cauldron and announced: “It is done!” with a giddy bob that made her dark braids jump.

“Bring the child!” Winifred gestured absently toward the ceiling as she stepped quickly to the cauldron, peering into its depths as if to assess her sister’s brewing abilities.

Sarah glanced between the two dangling bodies. “Which one.”

“Pick one!” Winifred snarled, flailing one arm behind her at Sarah in a dismissive motion.

“Take that one,” Sarah said, as Mary moved to help her. Sarah was stroking the leg of a scrawny dark-haired boy with bright blue eyes and a snubbed nose, who clung to the chains that supported him and looked with trepidation at his unwanted admirer. “This one’s pretty. I want to keep him for a while.” 

The other hostage, a gawky youth in the grip of the most awkward stage of puberty, hissed and grunted frantically and thrashed admirably in his chains at Sarah’s pronunciation of his fate.

Sam waited until the two younger witches had their backs turned, and, when Winifred was fully focused on pouring a ladleful of potion into a phial, he cocked his shotgun and fired a shot through the roof, which echoed loudly in the small space. As intended, the witches screamed and panicked. Mary dropped immediately to her knees, whimpering as Sarah spun and shrieked a terrible sound like a banshee’s wail, her rash movements sending her toward the cauldron, which she bumped and set to swinging. Winifred, shielding her ears with her hands, made no sound beyond her first startled cry and instead turned with startled and glaring eyes to seek out the cause of the disturbance. 

Sam took full advantage of their distraction. He leapt down from the upper floor and lunged forward, upturning the cauldron as Winifred snarled and dropped her hands from her ears. Sam was moving before the first bolts of lightning flowed from her fingers, and he found himself thinking, in a rush of giddy nerves, that he felt a bit like Luke on the Death Star, facing off against the Emperor. He staggered forward, ripping the burlap sack from the hook on which it hung, and jerked it away from the fire. He managed to release the first knot and then had to drop the bag as his attempt to dodge another streak of Winifred’s lightning made him stumble directly into the press of Sarah’s body.

“Hello,” she purred, a hot gust of air against his ear. His body convulsed and he tried to convince his feet to move, but she brought up one long arm and wrapped it across his front as she pressed her body flush to his back. “Shush, I’ll take care of you, lovely boy.” It was suddenly very difficult to remember why he disliked Sarah Sanderson; she was charming, after all, and sweet and beautiful. 

In the next moment, however, there was a blur of spitting black fur that lunged up from the ground and anchored its back claws into Sam’s right shoulder blade as its front paws swatted threateningly at Sarah. 

“Vicious beast!” she screamed. “You’ve scratched my face!”

It was pandemonium. While Sarah raced up the stairs to survey the damage that had been done to her face, Mary snatched Dean from Sam’s shoulder, pitching him across the room, and grabbed her broom as a weapon to defend herself. Sam ignored his initial instinct to retrieve Dean when he noticed Winifred had the phial of potion in her grasp and was turning a winch, lowering one of the kids down from the ceiling. 

Launching himself at Winifred, Sam sent her stumbling backward, where she knocked into the Black Flame Candle, which, though impossible to destroy, was still, after all, a lit candle burning in a wooden home. Winifred’s dress caught fire, and the orange flames licked up her left leg and swallowed the fabric of her dress as she floundered and shrieked for her sisters to help her. While Mary rushed to Winifred’s aid, Sam freed the two boys suspended from the ceiling, neither of whom needed to be told to run; they pelted toward the door without a backward glance. 

“Get the potion!” Dean ordered as he bounded up to Sam, his whiskers singed from where the fire had caused them to curl.

Sanderson Mill was burning, and there were no firemen to put it out. The blaze, spurred by magic, was not dowsed by the sprinklers the museum had installed. Sam tucked the potion into his jacket pocket, before following Dean out the front door, racing toward the parking lot, as, behind them, the blaze continued, burning strong. 

“You will suffer for what you have done this night!” a shrill voice promised him as he ran. 

He didn’t need to look behind him to know that the Sanderson sisters had escaped their home and were in pursuit.

“Friggin’ witches,” Dean muttered. 

Sam silently agreed, focused on pulling the keys from his pocket and sliding behind the wheel of the Impala. He was moving so fast that Dean ended up having to jump across his lap to the passenger seat. Sam pulled the door closed with one hand as the other started the ignition, his foot pressing down on the gas. The Impala tore down the road, wheels sending up a spray of gravel.

“Where are we going?” Dean asked, his claws anchored into the vinyl of the seat, standing with his legs apart and his tail straight in the air. With his back arched and his eyes wide, he reminded Sam of a Halloween decoration again.

“Graveyard,” Sam said, remembering something Dean had mentioned about the Sanderson sisters. “They can’t set foot there, right?” 

He’d never heard of that being true before, but any witches he’d come across had been mostly happy and well adjusted. Bobby had once spoken about a hunt where the witches had made a deal with a demon in exchange for magical powers, which sounded a bit like the Sanderson sisters, but he was pretty sure even those witches hadn’t carried about a book made out of flesh that had an eyeball on the cover. A _working_ eyeball. He was willing to believe that the Sandersons’ might be breaking a lot of new ground.

“They’ll turn to stone if they step on hallowed ground,” Dean confirmed. 

Sam didn’t ask how he knew, he figured if you were alive for over three hundred years, you probably picked-up a thing or two. It wasn’t like they had a lot of options, either way.

He pulled the car up onto the sidewalk, stumbling out and lunging for the gate to the graveyard as the three witches rounded the corner, just behind them. 

“That was close,” Sam gasped as he staggered passed a row of tombstones, his momentum carrying him forward.

“Well, don’t get too comfortable,” Dean muttered, just as the Sanderson sisters came to a halt, hovering above their heads.

“Impudent whelp,” Winifred hissed. “Come here so I can _rip you to shreds!_ ”

“That’s not really much incentive for me,” Sam said, and then had to duck as Winifred swooped down toward him. He sprawled himself flat across the ground as she passed, rolling quickly onto his back to make sure she had moved on. “You can’t touch me!” he shouted, not intending to taunt her, only surprised and relieved that it was true.

Apparently, however, he had given her inspiration, because she drifted over to a crumbling grave marker, peppered with clinging moss and came to a stop. 

_“Unfaithful lover, long since dead…”_

“What is she doing?” Sam whispered, as Winifred continued. 

_“ …Deep asleep in thy wormy bed...”_

Dean flicked a nervous glance at him. “Raising the dead.”

“What?”

_“…Wiggle thy toes, open thine eyes, twist thy fingers toward the sky...”_

“Billy Butcherson was her old beau,” Dean explained in a rush. “Until he cheated on her, and she poisoned him to teach him a lesson.”

“She what?”

_“… Life is sweet, be not too shy, on thy feet, so saith I.”_

“No, wait,” Sam said, overcoming his momentary panic with common sense. “That’s not how you raise a zombie.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Dean said. “Run!” 

Sam was prepared to brush off Dean’s advice. Raising zombies required more than a cheap rhyme, or else anyone would be doing it. A hilarious prank, fun for the whole family – if it were that easy, hunters would never have a day’s rest, and the zombie apocalypse would have happened decades ago.

Of course, when the ground below Winifred rumbled and pitched, Sam staggered back, his eyes wide. “What the _hell_?”

“I don’t know, dude,” Dean said, from his perch on the bowed head of a stone angel. “What do we do?”

“Well,” Sam looked around, and wished that he’d had the forethought to grab his bag from the trunk of Impala, into which he had stuffed salt and weapons. Of course, there hadn’t been any time to stop and raid his trunk, but it would have come in handy. Next time he was being chased by seventh century evil witches, Sam made a mental note to drive the Impala through the gate and right into the graveyard. “I don’t have a silver stake.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “So we can’t kill the zombie.” 

The grass above the old grave was slowly being covered by loamy earth, Sam saw a grey, putrefied hand pressing up above the soil and spared a moment for the oddly hysterical thought that Winifred hadn’t just animated a corpse, she had made what should have been nothing more than rotted bones into a fleshy, albeit decaying, zombie. 

“What do you think?” Dean continued. “ Kill the witches to break the spell?”

“You think that will work?” 

The cat’s tail twitched and, Sam thought, if he had been human, Dean would have probably shrugged.

“Do we have another choice?” Dean asked.

Sam was forced to admit, “Not so much.”

Billy Butcherson pulled himself free of his grave in a shuddering, strained movement that Sam figured was the result of three centuries of slow rotting, followed by a partial regeneration. His clothes were tattered and they exposed more of the green-grey puckered and flaky flesh than Sam would have preferred, but he had a vague idea that the natural fabrics around in the seventeenth century probably wouldn’t have stood-up well to the test of three centuries worth of time, so he figured it could have been a lot worse. 

“Okay,” he said to himself, then tossed himself to the ground as Sarah swooped toward him. 

Sarah hovered just above him, her cloak billowing around her as she said, “Beautiful virgin who lit the candle and woke me from my sleep. I will be your friend.”

Sam cringed, but was distracted by Dean’s shout of “Mary!” and twisted around in his sprawled position, looking to where Mary Sanderson hovered, a little girl clutched in her arms like a rag doll. The witch was crooning and stroking the girl’s cheek, smudging the tears that glistened there. She looked to be about four years old. 

“Let her go!”

“Never, never,” Mary crooned. “Mine forever.”

Winifred cackled and swooped over. “Perfect, sister!” She turned her head in Sam’s direction. “Sarah, the potion!”

“Here, Winifred!” Sarah shouted in triumph, and Sam jerked around to realize that as his attention had been focused elsewhere, she had snagged the phial from his jacket pocket. Apparently being on a broomstick meant she technically wasn’t touching hallowed ground, even if she had slipped her hand into the pocket of someone who was.

“No!” his shout was echoed by Dean’s, as Sarah swooped to where Mary was holding the quietly sobbing little girl.

Sam leapt back onto his feet, racing to where the witches hovered, only to be tackled by the remains of Billy Butcherson. Up close, Sam realized the walking corpse’s lips had been sown sloppily shut; his eyes were misted over so that Sam could not tell what color they had been. Rough wriggling fingers pressed into Sam’s skin with bruising force. Billy Butcherson was regenerating even as they struggled.

Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Dean racing along a branch of a tree and then he was distracted again. As Sam kicked up, viciously, he managed to knock Billy away. Spinning around, he was in time to watch Dean complete his leap and land squarely on Winifred Sanderson’s shoulder, swiping the phial out of her hands. Sam raced forward and caught it before it hit the ground, even as Winifred pried Dean from her shoulder and whipped him away. 

“Let the girl go, or I’ll destroy the potion!” Sam yelled.

Winifred turned and grinned a twisted little smile. “Give me the potion or the girl dies.”

It wasn’t much of a choice, really. Maybe it would have been heroic to say he did it to save the little girl, or that he was thinking about how it was his fault it all was happening and that he was accepting responsibility. Sam was a hunter, though, and he had more pragmatic motivations for tipping the phial into his own mouth: he was playing for time.

“Now you don’t have a choice!” Sam called, spreading his arms wide. “Come and get me,” he murmured to himself. Winifred snarled and swooped low, her arm reaching out to snatch him up. Sam was faster.

Grabbing her outstretched arm, he pulled once, hard, and she launched with surprising ease off of her broom, toppling onto the ground. 

“Winnie!” Mary shrieked, clutching the little girl closer to her, as Sarah cried out and raced forward.

Sam blinked startled eyes as Winifred Sanderson pulled herself to her feet, flipping her cloak behind her in agitation as she glared at him. 

“I would tear you to pieces,” she said. “If you weren’t glowing so perfectly.” 

Sam stood his ground and had faith, trusting absolutely in Dean’s previous assurances.

Winifred took two staggering steps and then glanced down at her feet, her brows pinching in confusion. “What…” she wondered; and then nothing more. Her red hair, her green dress and dark cloak, the color that the chill wind had brought to her cheeks, were swallowed up by grey. From one instant to the next, Winifred Sanderson had been turned to stone.

“No,” Sarah sobbed, flinging herself at Sam. She dragged him up into the air with her, but her upward momentum slowed and she, too frowned. “No,” she whispered, low and sad and helpless as she turned her face into the rising sun. A moment later, Sam fell to the ground as Sarah Sanderson dissolved into a cloud of dust that sparkled in the climbing light.

“I’ve got you,” Sam said, catching the girl who had dropped when Mary Sanderson disappeared as well, into nothing but a shower of glittering dust that scattered in the breeze as it fell. “You’re safe.”

“They’re gone?” the girl questioned, casting a mistrustful glance from Sam up to the sky, and wiping at her face.

“Yeah,” Sam assured her. She nodded once and then bolted toward the gate of the cemetery. “Hey, wait!” He saw her careen full-tilt into one of the confused teenagers still making their way home, and from the way the surprised boy gathered her up and patted her back reassuringly, Sam knew that she would be fine.

 

“Dean?” he called, turning around, grimacing at the sight of the sprawled and quickly withering corpse of Billy Butcherson. At some point the zombie had lost its head; Sam wondered if that was the cat’s doing. “Dean?” he shouted, louder, as he moved forward, his eyes searching for any sign of the little shadow.

There was a little girl in a white nightgown crouched low, and Sam came to a stop, watching as she reached out a careful hand, before stopping suddenly and twisting her head around to look at him with sad grey eyes. Her long brown hair hung straight and full down her back, shielded by a white nightcap that brought Sam up short. Little girls didn’t wear nightcaps like that to bed. 

She smiled, a dejected, sorrowful little upturn of her lips, before turning back to whatever lay before her on the ground. Sam knew, even before he stepped forward enough to see, that he would find Dean.

The cat lay still, his front paws stretched out and his body twisted awkwardly, as if he had tried to land on his feet but hadn’t had the time to manage it. 

“Is he…” but Sam couldn’t finish the statement. He hadn’t known Dean Thackeray very long, but in those few hours when they had thought the witches were dead, Sam had allowed himself to entertain thoughts of Dean on the road with him, picturing his life with a companion and a friend, sarcastic and rude and ever-present. It was ridiculous to miss something that had never happened, and Sam couldn’t help feeling that it was all horribly unfair.

“Is it?” the little girl asked, her voice soft and light, bringing Sam up from his thoughts as she watched him. “Unfair?” she clarified. She smiled then, amusement that was too wise for her young face making her pale eyes shine.

“You’re his sister,” Sam said, realization striking him like a freight train. “You’re Emily.” She tipped her head in acknowledgement. “You’re a ghost?” It was wholly and _completely_ unfair, then, if she had been around all this time and Dean had never known, or if she had been prevented from resting peacefully because of what the witches had done to her. Sam feared for a horrible moment that he would have to salt and burn her bones, but she giggled at him and interrupted his racing thoughts.

“The witches are dead,” she said. “Their magic is undone.” She paused, like there was something significant about this that Sam was still failing to comprehend. “All of it.” 

Sam glanced out toward the front gate and realized for the first time that the eerie mist was gone, that there was the sound of quiet chatter drifting in the damp dawn air and signs of movement. The adults of Salem were waking up. 

“I had to come,” she explained, a little urgently. “I had to, for him.” She turned back to Dean’s unmoving body. “And it turns out he’s just as lazy as ever!” she suddenly shouted, jerking herself to her feet and bracing her hands on her hips. “Dean Thackeray, wake up this instant!”

Sam felt momentarily confused, then wondered if he would have to explain about going to a better place to this little ghost girl. Before he could get his mouth to work, the body of the black cat began to glow. At first, Sam was convinced it was sunlight, but there were no beams of sun reaching past the tree that was shading them. The glow was only around Dean, and a second later, Sam had to blink as another image was taking shape over that of the cat. 

One moment it was Dean, lying still with his paws sprawled awkwardly, and the next it was a young man, still glowing and utterly beautiful. He wore tattered brown pants and a loose linen shirt and his hair was tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. 

“What?” Sam found himself asking. Emily flashed a bright grin at him. 

“All their magic!” she reiterated. “Dean was never killed. They _changed_ him, but they didn’t kill him.”

“But he died!” Sam cried. “He was dead, just now!”

“He was immortal,” she corrected. “How can you kill an immortal cat?” She had a point. 

Sam turned, flabbergasted, back to the guy to Dean, who had dirty blond hair and a slender nose and _freckles_ and Sam swallowed thickly and looked away because he was having inappropriate thoughts about a three hundred and twenty four year old cat, who was a _boy_.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Sam heard Emily’s sing-song as she tipped forward on the balls of her feet and leaned over Dean, her brown hair sweeping his lightly freckled cheek.

“Y’er such a brat,” Dean muttered. A moment later, his body jerked and his eyes snapped open. “Emily?” 

She laughed brightly at his astonishment. 

“Am I dreaming?”

“Nope!” she trilled.

He blinked; his eyes still glued to the smiling face of his little sister. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet,” she said, her smile a little softer, her eyes bright and warm as she looked at her brother.

“I’ll just…” Sam said, gestured awkwardly behind him and began moving off, giving the siblings their privacy. Dean’s whispered, “I should be dead,” drifted after him. He could hear Emily’s soft voice, but couldn’t make out her words.

“All Souls Day,” Sam thought to himself, remembering what the witches had said and what his own research had revealed. The veil between the living and the dead was weakest, and Emily had stepped through so she could speak with her big brother: the brother who had risked everything to save her, the brother who had been living with the guilt of his failure for three centuries.

“Hey,” Dean said, his voice a little gruff as he walked slowly through the front gate of the cemetery some time later.

“Hey,” Sam greeted. He was leaning against the hood of the Impala, facing into the slowly rising sun and nursing a growing sense of relief. It had only been one night. It felt like at least eight. “You okay?”

“I’m human,” Dean said with a shrug, joining Sam in his perch. “Which, y’know, a little awkward. Em says I might be coughing up hairballs for the next few days but I suspect she was just being a brat.” 

Sam grinned. “I like her.”

Dean’s wistful grin spread wide, and his pride and devotion to his little sister shone on his face. “Yeah, she’s not so bad.” He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, and shrugged. “I didn’t think it’d end like this. I thought … y’know, just being able to move on would be good. I never thought…”

“Must be weird.”

Dean snorted. “Dude, three centuries of climbing trees and drinking milk and licking my damned tail and then suddenly I’m seventeen again!” 

Sam shrugged. 

Dean huffed. “No one is going to take me seriously!” 

Sam snorted, which turned into a snicker, and then quickly spiraled into a loud guffawing laugh spurred, undoubtedly, by the adrenaline of the evening and the relief of it all being over with such a clear and definite victory.

Beside him, Dean was laughing, quieter, dry and rough, his head tipped back and a hand braced loosely across his middle. It felt easy, oddly right and entirely natural to sit together like that, and Sam started to think of an entirely different future with Dean. No longer a feline companion, but a real partner: facing down ghosts and vampires and whatever else was waiting in the darkness, always together no matter what. Suddenly a future of hunting no longer seemed so stiflingly lonely to Sam. 

Bumping his shoulder lightly against Dean’s, Sam smiled. “I’ll take you seriously.”

Dean raised an eyebrow, turned to face Sam as he asked, “Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Sam affirmed. They were silent for a moment, then Sam cleared his throat, glancing back at the other boy a little nervously as he said, “The offer stands. If you’re still interested.”

“Offer?”

Sam shrugged, glanced away and tried to wrangle his sudden roiling nerves into submission. “To come with me,” he said. It came out lower than he was expecting, breathy and hushed. He realized somewhat belatedly that he was tipping his head down, moving into Dean’s space. 

Dean wasn’t moving away.

“Dude,” Dean said, his voice equally soft. “I have, like, three hundred year old cat breath. This is probably not a good idea.”

Sam considered that fleetingly as he continued to dip his head forward. Dismissed the notion quickly. “I don’t care.” He pressed his lips against Dean’s; felt his eyes dropping closed on a sudden sense of possibility.

Dean tasted like cream, which Sam remembered seeing Susannah setting out for him after she had closed up the museum. Jesus, that was just last night. It was crazy and happening fast, but he didn’t stop. Sam flicked his tongue along the bottom curve of Dean’s mouth, pressed in, his hand cupping the back of Dean’s head, and felt the loose leather tie that was holding Dean’s hair back. With a gentle tug, Sam loosed it; he let his fingers twist into the soft hair and down the smooth skin along the back of Dean’s neck.

When they separated, breath a little short and heavy, Sam smiled shyly. “How’s that?”

Dean licked his lips, his green eyes flickering away and then back, alight with a teasing glint as he said, “Not bad, for a virgin.”

“Oh right,” Sam said, huffing in feigned offense. “Says mister experience. Got a lot of tail when you had a tail?”

“Dude, I got play when I was human!”

“Sure.”

“Chicks _loved_ me!”

Sam smacked his lips thoughtfully, waited until he had Dean’s full attention before he said, “Tastes like tuna.”

“Hey!” Dean swatted at Sam. “I do not! I haven’t have fish in…”

Sam didn’t bother to wait and hear how long it had been since Dean had eaten fish. He pulled Dean in again and pressed their mouths together, and Dean gave up his rant in favor of groaning appreciatively. 

After, when there was color in their cheeks and heat zinging through them, when Dean couldn’t stop smiling and Sam couldn’t help flashing shy happy glances at the other man, sitting side-by-side on the hood of the car, Sam bumped his shoulder against Dean’s and said, “So, how about it?”

“What?”

Sam snorted a laugh and raised his eyebrows, receiving nothing but an innocent stare for his trouble. Sam shook his head, taking a deep breath and keeping a tight hold on his hope as he said, “Come hunting with me.”

Dean tipped his head to the side, observing Sam with quiet consideration, his gaze solemn and his expression still. Sam felt his breath catch in his throat, nerves bubbling back inside him, but then Dean smirked at him, that light back in his too-green eyes as he said, “Sure, Sammy. I’ll be a witch with you.”

Sam eyes narrowed as he assessed Dean’s face. After a moment, he met Dean’s mischievous look with one of his own, finding it difficult to contain his smile as he said, “I’m a hunter, flea-brain.” Beside him, Dean tipped his head back and laughed, the sound full and light and utterly delighted. It made Sam grin.


End file.
